2023 PD Howler - News and more!

[DarkAngel]

First, this program has been around for some time, is consistently improving, and is still user-friendly.

 Natural media painting, video, animation, 3D, visual effects

Cinematic visual FX in a familiar painting environment

Breakthrough real-time howling performance

2023 What's new

Render 3D geometry into a brush
Realistic new impasto brushes
New painter's color wheel
Gamut masking
New color temperature filter
New color reticles on the improved color picker
Post-correction curves for lines, rectangles, ellipses, curves
New 1-3 point perspective guides
Dark mode support in Windows 11
New undo browser
New sky rendering filter with volume clouds
Continuous paint fill mode
Select your preferred accelerator card
New noise tool and open simplex noise
New frame blending tool
New Mandelbrot and Julia set exploration features
Auto keyframes in the timeline
GUI improvements.  New combo box control
Updated Europa filter, Lorenz attractors, and lots more.

Recent
Paper layers
Rewritten color pickers and media browser
Non-local-means filter and CLAHE
Tone mapping, warp mesh filter, super-resolution upscale
Centripetal and chordal parameters for curves
Export H264 and WMV video formats.
Auto-magic blemish and feature removal

https://pdhowler.com/index.htm -- go here for to see what this program is all about. It is just one of his incarnations that Phillip and his partner Dan Richie have "slaved over" LOL

Go here to see about his programs and get more info and New Lower Pricing!: http://thebest3d.com/

[Dakorillon]

There is also a class being taught by Philip to really Deep Dive into all the things (okay, many of the things!) that PDHowler can do! And a free license for the software comes with the class enrollment, so if you want to get it, AND learn the easiest way to use it, that is another option!

https://digitalartlive.com/plans/pd-howler-deep-dive-course/

[DarkAngel]

Thanks for chiming in Dak, glad to see you in our hallways again too, missed you.

[Dakorillon]

Thanks Darkius Angelous!
My Vivaldi had lost ALL my passwords...And it's taken me a while to get back to getting them all restored, one reset at a time! lol So it is good to be back, even though I hang out on the ceiling and watch all the goings-ons rather than jumping down in the middle of the fray!

I'm teaching half the class, so I feel a little tender towards Howler. If anyone ever has questions about Howler and how to use it, just tag me, and I'll be happy to answer!

Thanks for chiming in Dak, glad to see you in our hallways again too, missed you.

[DarkAngel]

Wonderful! Yup I lurk about places too. I have also created a Q&A part in this area too so do check back often.

[Agent0013]

As an avid user of PD Howler 12, I can say that the application is super awesome! I am still enjoying exploring the deep hidden features. The 3D from greyscale, has been a great feature, though I don't know how to get textures to adhere to the model. A good dedicated auto UV feature would be a big help with that. If I try taking the resulting models into another application to make a UV map or two, It is so high a polygon count, that it won't import successfully. So if going that way is what I have to do, It would be nice to have a way to reduce the polygon count of a greyscale generated model. The highest polygon count my modeling applications can handle are approximately 75,000 for Wings 3D, and about 250,000 for Blender. I own Hexagon 2.5, but as it is way too confusing for me, I do not have it installed.
So one new thing I'd suggest be added to PD Howler would be a good UV Mapping feature.

[Dakorillon]

Hi! Great to see another user!
Two possibilities for you:

After great experimentation, we found that making very small models (maps) was best for getting them into other software, like smaller than 256x256. When you save out the obj, there is also the possibility to save out the texture map (and other maps!) And then you just import each of them into the software you want. We opened it in Carrara with no problem that way. I can open larger ones in Daz Studio with the import obj and then replace the maps in the proper places. But, it does tend to stretch the textures. You can also bring it into DS and then if you have Decimator, you can use that. to reduce the polycount.

Number 2 is to just bring your created maps into the other software, then you can have larger maps! Carrara, I think Bryce, and now in DS there is Ultra-scenery that can accept the height maps created in PD Howler, and then look very nice!

So, to recap, make smaller maps so that the objs are smaller,
Just use the map itself if your software uses heightmaps
Save out your texture maps either from 3D designer, or from the Filter>Artistic>Texture map (you can add erosion, etc) and then import them/place them in your software to match them up. The info is in the mtl file, so once you place them, they match correctly.

Hope that helps!

(The newest version has a lot of new 3d capabilities and obj rendering, which Philip (PD Hower) will be covering in his portions of the class.)

Dak

As an avid user of PD Howler 12, I can say that the application is super awesome! I am still enjoying exploring the deep hidden features. The 3D from greyscale, has been a great feature, though I don't know how to get textures to adhere to the model. A good dedicated auto UV feature would be a big help with that. If I try taking the resulting models into another application to make a UV map or two, It is so high a polygon count, that it won't import successfully. So if going that way is what I have to do, It would be nice to have a way to reduce the polygon count of a greyscale generated model. The highest polygon count my modeling applications can handle are approximately 75,000 for Wings 3D, and about 250,000 for Blender. I own Hexagon 2.5, but as it is way too confusing for me, I do not have it installed.
So one new thing I'd suggest be added to PD Howler would be a good UV Mapping feature.

[Agent0013]

Hi! Great to see another user!
Two possibilities for you:

After great experimentation, we found that making very small models (maps) was best for getting them into other software, like smaller than 256x256. When you save out the obj, there is also the possibility to save out the texture map (and other maps!) And then you just import each of them into the software you want. We opened it in Carrara with no problem that way. I can open larger ones in Daz Studio with the import obj and then replace the maps in the proper places. But, it does tend to stretch the textures. You can also bring it into DS and then if you have Decimator, you can use that. to reduce the polycount.

Number 2 is to just bring your created maps into the other software, then you can have larger maps! Carrara, I think Bryce, and now in DS there is Ultra-scenery that can accept the height maps created in PD Howler, and then look very nice!

So, to recap, make smaller maps so that the objs are smaller,
Just use the map itself if your software uses heightmaps
Save out your texture maps either from 3D designer, or from the Filter>Artistic>Texture map (you can add erosion, etc) and then import them/place them in your software to match them up. The info is in the mtl file, so once you place them, they match correctly.

Hope that helps!

(The newest version has a lot of new 3d capabilities and obj rendering, which Philip (PD Hower) will be covering in his portions of the class.)

Dak

Thanks for the info. I will try the suggestions I have the resources for.
I do have Bryce, and I use it a lot! I think I may be one of a select few that know Bryce 7.1 Pro extremely well. The way you model from a greyscale height map in Bryce is through the Deep Texture Editor, and it works only for the Terrain objects, and Symmetrical Lattice objects. I do a lot of modeling in Bryce, and I can apply the color image versions of the  height map as textures for the resulting model using the Deep Texture Editor. Some of my models when rendered in Bryce have helped produce winning images. Sadly exporting those particular models does not produce an obj that is without several blaring geometry issues once imported into other applications. That said, with the right steps within Bryce, a height map generated model can look pretty good.

[Dakorillon]

   Cool! Can't wait to see the results of the experiments!