Howler - VFX digital painting software
polycounter lvl 8
Howler 11 released
VFX friendly digital painting software Howler 11 is now available for order. Below is short list of what's new in Howler 11. You can find out more and order Howler 11 by visiting us on www.squirreldome.com as well as www.Thebest3d.com and our PDHowler channel on Youtube.
Howler 11 now has a new lower suggested price of $49 (currently $45), and the upgrade is currently $25. We believe you would be hard pressed to get more graphics power for your dollar.
We put a lot of work into this one over the last 2 years, so we hope you will find it a great addition to your toolset. Howler 11 works with Windows 7-10 (not currently XP) and requires a fairly recent GPU for accelerated functions
Howler 11 new feaures
New gradient tool
⦁ Adjustable gradients
⦁ new gradient types
⦁ New contour fill
Numeric entry throughout the program
Improved image scaling sampling
Improved crop tool
Callouts and vector objects
New Puppy Ray for GPU*
⦁ Rewritten for higher quility
⦁ Visible sun
⦁ Water plane with reflections
⦁ Improved sampling
⦁ Improved global illumination
⦁ Bounce light
⦁ Hardware textures
⦁ Bump maps
Media browser
⦁ Save particle media directly from the media browser
⦁ Delete directly from the media browser
Color
⦁ Floating color picker from Particle 9
⦁ Pickers remember settings between instances
Improved curve and rotoscope tools
⦁ Transformation handles
⦁ Free transform
⦁ Shift select points
⦁ Onscreen keyframes
Filters
⦁ Julia set rendering*
⦁ Water drops
⦁ Shape bombing
⦁ Bilateral filter
⦁ Make a normal map
⦁ Fracture
⦁ Worly noise
⦁ Water caustics
⦁ Water ripples
Timeline
⦁ Larger preview
⦁ Refinements
⦁ Water drop filter
⦁ See the scrub bar update while playing animations
GUI
⦁ Improved responsiveness
⦁ Font panel arrow key and mouse wheel navigation
Settings
⦁ GUI color pen settings
⦁ System look option
All new "Ground up" object oriented API
⦁ Much simpler to program and much more powerful
⦁ Vector drawing in 2D/3D
⦁ Vector and matrices
⦁ Gradients and convolution kernel
⦁ Color and color matrix
⦁ Transformations
⦁ Keyframes and curves
⦁ Noise classes
⦁ XML parsing, properties, pattern matching and stack classes
⦁ Obj file parsing and geometry
* GPU only implementation. Not available on CPU only.
Replies
Howler 8 is a modern natural media painting application descended from the popular Project Dowaffle paint program. It includes numerous tools for the CG industry (rotoscoping, match moving), in addition to full painting and image editing.
Howler 8 and Artist 8 can be found on www.squirreldome.com, and also with our reseller at www.TheBeset3d.com.
Links :
www.squirreldome.com
www.thebest3D.com
September 8, 2013 - Santa Clarita, CA and San Diego, CA
TheBest3D and Dan Ritchie announce the Release of Project Dogwaffle 9.0
PD Howler adds Puppy Ray, an animatable global illumination ray tracer for 3D work, Side-by-Side mode, Particle gravity, enhanced Orbicle brushes and more GPU support are just the begining.
Dan Ritchie of Squirreldome.com, author of Project Dogwaffle Professional digital painting and animation tools, and Philip Staiger of TheBest3D.com, have jointly announced the release and immediate availability of PD Howler version 9.
New Features
Puppy Ray
Perhaps the single most impactful new feature is the addition of Puppy Ray, a ray tracer which is made to interpret your paintings and photos as elevation maps and render them as 3D endless scenic 3D landscapes. When flying through the landscape, it automatically keeps tiling new elements ahead of the camera view, so you appear to fly across endless terrain. Puppy Ray can work from a single static image when flying over its elevation map, or even use an image sequence that's been packed into a DWA (Dogwaffle animation) file or an AVI. Highly dynamic visual effects are enabled by also having an independent color channel, which in turn can also be animated. A third resource, the custom brush image, can feed into the Skydome.
Puppy Ray includes very high levels of anti aliasing, global illumination, soft shadows, a dynamic light source, geometry pre-filtering and other effects. It can be used for fancy 3D animations, just as much as backdrops, useful in games and illustrative fantasy art. Puppy Ray is accessible under the Transforms filter collection, next to 3D Designer, Spherize and other special FX tools already included with PD Pro.
Side-by-Side mode
Many filters have been enhanced to support a toggle switch that enables the filter on only half the view. The left side remains at the original state, while the right side shows what happens to the image while you're adjusting the parameters of the filter. This helps in comparing the image before and after the new effect would be applied.
Particle Gravity Filter
There's a new animated particle gravity filter that can render some interesting spinning glows and flares. One can use it for creating funky new brushes, or animated height maps of different styles, for use in Puppy Ray, for instance, or in various video editing tools in need of new effects.
Numerous Performance and Workflow improvements
A number of changes were made to increase productivity when working with PD Howler :
Faster switching between different media, startup, and various functions.
Loading brush images no longer defaults to targa only.
The brush keyframer now has a linear interpolation option.
We have less usage of .net framework for those who don't want to use it. This also helps make it run better under Linux with WINE.
The countdown filter now uses a more standard colorbars and real-time preview.
Orbicle brushes s can be scaled interactively on its preview pane.
Previously, telescoping the info panel didn't refresh the info until you moved the pointer over the main image, which was disorienting.
Copy/paste for rotoscoping has been implemented.
Starry night and Animated flares & glows was integrated into a single filter, and updated with more speed and real-time preview.
You can now load just a subset of an AVI file, if desired.
Loading AVI's no longer continues to load frames if the animation cannot be initialized.
In addition to loading an animation for use in the main work area (Main image buffer) it is now also possible to pick a DWA or AVI for use as the animated Swap images as well as another one for use as animated alpha selection masks. This has great repercussions for compositing with image sequences containing per-pixel details for each frame, such as depth or transparency information.
It should be much safer to run multiple instances of the program now. Previously, plugins were not aware of which instance of the program to communicate with. This was a limitation of COM. There are now fewer plugins that use the COM mechanism, and most of the remaining ones are non-critical to daily use.
Much faster pasting into an existing image.
Fixed a bug in the timeline/merge with swap. Merged with the blue channel duplicated into the green channel.
Added Oilify Kuwahura/SNN filters to the timeline.
There are some new color sets for the GUI
Making an image seamless can now be applied to an animation, provided the 'keep original size' button is checked. This means that you can turn an animation not only into a looping animation as before, but also into a semaless at that. The combination of seamless and loopable makes it a great tool for fancy animated textures for a lot of uses in 3D and video.
New Content : 3D Stickers brush Images
Many more improvements new features are listed on the website. New content is also included in the form of 3D rendered sticker mages for use as custom toon brushes. These were developed and licensed from a French artist, Michel Agullo, author of a vast collection of high quality 3D vinyl stickers for use in room decorations, particularly for children's rooms and schools or hobby rooms. Additional brush images are being offered for free download on a monthly basis.
Trial Download
A slightly limited free trial demo version is available for free download at www.Squirreldome.com and www.TheBest3D.com
Availability, Pricing & Promotional Discounts
PD Howler 9.0 is being offered for sale at $89, with a temporary launch promotion with an automatic 9 % discount.
Users of prior versions of Project Dogwaffle (including all prior releases of PD Pro, Howler, Artist and Particles) are being offered incentives for upgrading to version 9. Discounts start at $36 % for users of very old versions dating back over 10 years ago from v1.5 and can reach up to 65 % or more.
Students are offered a 70 % discount.
Teachers and educators of accredited institutions in Digital Media such as universities, public and private schools and instructors of various organizations are being offered PD Howler 9 for free.
About the Author and Project Dogwaffle
PD Howler 9.0 is the latest in a long series of releases under the name of Project Dogwaffle, which started around 10-11 years ago and saw its first commercial release with version 1.5. Dan Ritchie, the author of Project Dogwaffle, is a veteran 3D programmer who has worked with 3D animators and digital artists alike. Recent releases of PD Howler have included support for GPU acceleration, multi-threading, 3D rendering of elevation maps, motion tracking, motion estimation, video stabilization, endless scenic ray tracing, Rules-based particle brushes that paint complete trees in a single brush stroke, and various effects for realistic paint effects including Pigment lifting and shadow drops. Dan Ritchie can be contacted through www.squirreldome.com
About TheBest3D.com
Philip Staiger supports and sponsors a variety of interesting and affordable 3D and 2D tools. Hundreds of freely viewable tutorials have been created to document the evolutionary philosophy behind the tools and techniques offered in Project Dogwaffle.
Howler 9.1 is half off May 31-June 1.
Links
Offer:
http://dan-ritchie.wix.com/howlerpromotion
Website:
http://www.squirreldome.com
For this weekend only, you can get Howler 9.1, the latest and greatest digital painter and animator, for ½ off, or 44.50. After this weekend, the 1/3 off sale price will resume throughout June.
Version 7 (including the Motion Prediction Module) is now $9. See motion prediction in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVVR_g5hDDE with Howler 9.
Howler 9.1 is a natural media painter with animation and video capabilities. It features a large assortment of breakthrough performance image processing filters which can be animated as easily as pressing an animate button instead of OK, or through a keyframable timeline.
Howler can handle traditional animation tasks with onion skin and an exposure sheet, or it can work with high definition video with a timeline, brush keyframer, and various frame editing controls.
Howler 9 includes the Motion Prediction Module that can extrapolate frames to create longer sequences of animation, for example, to reduce rendering time by creating new in-between frames.
Howler 9 includes Puppy Ray, a GPU accelerated global illumination raytracer for animating height maps.
See Puppy Ray along side Verve in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYBDAW5CPL0
Howler also includes tool for feature removal over video. You can see them here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPrVBV-IXM
WHY ARE YOU USING A FLASH GALLERY TO DISPLAY ART!!!
Your website is horrible. HORRIBLE. AWFUL. The product could be amazing but the website is a automatic turn off. When I got to the gallery that "clicks" after each image is clicked I just left.
Now, for some ideas (can't just be a dick and post..). You should look at some other "younger" developers and pull inspiration for a future website design. Here are some pretty popular ones.
http://www.hdrlightstudio.com/
http://www.allegorithmic.com/
http://dev.quixel.se/
In addition, you should look at how you present the software. Right now, there is entirely too much text to read through. Look how "little" the websites I listed write about their products. The technical information is there if the user wants; however, the main product page isn't too technical and just presents what's needed to sell the product.
Hope this helps and GL with your product.
If you click on Downloads there is a Home edition of the previous version, 8.2 (Free Home Learning Edition).
When you're inside the software, by clicking on "Browse Media..." up on the left, you can select one of the various brush presets, they are quite good.
To move around use the Alt Graph key, LMB is to pan, RMB to dolly (like in Photoshop/Krita), by holding SPACEBAR the colour picker pops up, there is a black arrow on the top right corner, it let you choose between various presets.
It's GPU accelerated too
Version 9.5 introduces updated foliage painting and onion skin tools, and new options for content creators, including landscape texturing and modeling tools, obj export, and cloud modeling, rendering.
What's new in Howler 9.5...
Architecture changes
Support up to 64 threads/cores, up from 12.
Photography
Local contrast filter stretches the dynamic color range in local areas to simulate the look of higher dynamic range images
Animation
Improved onion skin with more visible layers and layer options, and Red-shift to make it easier to determine past and future frames
New particle modeler and animator to render cloud like phenomenon
Foliage and particle painting changes
Ambient occlusion on foliage for more realism
z-buffering, so you don't need to keep track of painting in any particular order
Speed improvements
No more post redraw on foliage particles
Spring setting for Orbicle particle brushes
3D Designer changes
Floating point pipeline
Improved lighting and specular highlights
Ambient occlusion
Raytraced shadows
Cloud systems
Erosion and sediment
Shading by slope, altitude, and sediment
Store height map, texture, slope and altitude masks, zbuffer, lighting buffers, and more for later use
Export OBJ objects for interop with 3D programs
Tools for landscape texture artists
Slope shading filter
Ambient occlusion filter
Erosion filter
Buy from www.squirreldome.com, or from www.TheBest3D.com
Demo
http://www.squirreldome.com/demo/howler_9_5_Demo.exe
Holwer Digital Painter 9.5 is a natural media and animation painter geared toward the VFX industry, with tools like frame retiming, rotoscoping, timeline and compositing. For the next few weeks, you can purchase Howler 9.5 for 40% off, or $53.40, down from $89.99.
The offer can be found here
http://dan-ritchie.wix.com/howlerpromotion
and our main website is
www.squirreldome.com
http://www.squirreldome.com for full information on the latest developments
Latest features:
Scenery rendering with snow/erosion/sediment/cloud systems/obj export
improved onion skin with Red Shift
improved foliage painting
Www.squirreldome.com
Version 9.6 of the natural media paint and animation program designed for visual effects work is now available. The new version is focused on improving the user experience on different kinds of hardware ranging from tablets to workstations, and adding new tools that are critical to visual effects.
See the new Demo Real:
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Great new feature! The duplicate frame repair toolkit:
The new duplicate frame tool lets you manage video that has been damaged due to dropped frames or improper transcoding.
The tool helps you to find dropped or duplicate frames, then lets you manage them, either by deleting them, or extrapolating new in-between frames via motion prediction technology.
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Other new features:
Revamped greenscreen compositing tool with color matrix adjustments.
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Revamped camera stabilization/tracking and camera motion removal/restoration tool.
Revamped navigation. Zoom from pointer instead of center. Optional scrollbars for when the CTRL-Shift navigation isn't possible, such as on tablets.
New Vector Blur filter.
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New easy garbage masking for video using alt and rectangle/ellipse tools.
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New benchmarking tool, the Dogmark. Use Howler to test the speed of different processors using academic image processing functions.
Tools for single point matchmoving.
Matchmoving a shot in under 3 minutes...
https://vimeo.com/120186919
Support for higher resolution monitors. Fewer stacked panels at the top of the screen when a 1080p or higher monitor is available.
Revamped and animatable rubber sheet tool. (4 corner perspective warp)
Load directly to a stored image from the Browser.
GUI tweaks. Menu links to free transform tools for image and alpha.
Color replacer had an issue when animating h/s/v changes.
Added CPU fallback for foliage ambient occlusion that was only available on GPU previously.
Fixed a stability bug in the brush keyframer motion tracker and added features to support match move compositing.
Howler 9.6 is a pay update to those using versions 9.2 and below. However, a special discount price is available. Those who previously upgraded to version 9.5 will receive 9.6 for free. The upgrade discount is available to users of all versions, excluding free versions. The full version is also currently on sale for $65, USD - $35 off the full price, so it's a great time to get on board.
For those who upgraded to version 9.5 via Daniel Ritchie and Squirreldome.com, you should be contacted shortly with your upgrade information. Those who ordered through Phillip Staiger and TheBest3D.com, Daz, Digibuy, or others, your upgrade process is still in the works. Thank you for your patience.
PD Howler is the top tier version of Project Dogwaffle, a comprehensive paint, animation, and visual effects workhorse software for Windows
Howler as an animation tool
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PD Artist 9.6 (Howler minus the animation tools) also available now for $20. It can be found here:
http://dan-ritchie.wix.com/howlerpromotion
Howler digital paint and vfx animation software version 10 released, featuring new particle, bristle brush, orbicle and foliage painting options. To learn more about Howler 10, visit www.squirreldome.com or our affiliate, Thebest3d.com
New features:
Block interpolation morphs between two video in/out points to create new in-betweens. Great for replacing lost or unfinished frames in a render or repairing video.
New color picker with integrated color themes.
Foliage painting enhancements.
New orbicle particle painting options including audio as an input driver.
New memory efficient undo system including undo browser, compression and saving to disc.
Cinemascopic filter simulates the look of 2 color film processes from the 40's – 50's.
Crash recovery.
New media browser.
Brush improvements.
Demo:
http://squirreldome.com/Download.htm
What's new:
http://squirreldome.com/WhatsNew.htm
Buy:
http://squirreldome.com/Cart.htm
Digital paint and animation software PD Howler 11 is marked down to just $20 (from $49.99) largely because I've been to sick this month to work on it. Hope you enjoy.
http://squirreldome.com/WhatsNew.htm