Vector based painting software

melviso

Anyone know of any very good vector painting software that has custom brushes or allows u to tweak the spacing and has scatter like in a raster program. I have looked at adobe flash and inscape but I find them too restrictive.  I am looking for something like adobe flash fill paint brush but with scatter and spacing, u can also create custom brushes kinda like photoshop/krita but its vector. Not interested in line and fill at all.

Any ideas?

throttlekitty

I think Clip Studio Paint has these kinds of features. Depending on the look you're going for, you might want to look into Maya or ZBrush as well.

oglu

Mischief is a magic thing in that area cause its based on voxel.
The canvas is infinite big. And you are able to export it later in the size you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9wmrJ8VbI

https://www.madewithmischief.com/

gnoop

Microsoft Expression Design is free and have all those scatter brush options. It's a castrated version of old good Creative House Expression3 that had been bought and also made free by Microsoft a decade ago. Still might be around somewhere.

Also Xara  and Affinity Design do that.  Brush settings are a bit more simplistic although. Affinity Design on the other hand  is a single vector 2d program exporting 16 and 32 bit bitmaps.  Good for  height/depth textures

All of those scatter bitmap brush dabs, not just vector shapes  Xara is imo the best overal vector soft to work with bitmaps.  Has one click edge feather option, best ever object tagging system, allowing quick switch in between "styles".  Normal map and color  output for example.    Sadly only 8 bit and very few layer blending options.      

  In all 3 you could replace your brush strokes and bitmap fills with perfectly matching normal map or spec texture  variants of same things, re-compose and re-scale any time non destructively , change output resolution etc.      

poopipe

Another vote for clip studio.  The vector drawing is basically indistinguishable from the raster drawing so it's not even a ballache 

melviso

Thanks guys. Will check them out. 
What about Adobe illustrator? Any good?

melviso

@oglu I tried downloading the free version. But it does load after installation. It tries to boot but crashes. Any ideas?

ActionDawg

Illustrator is a great program for graphic design work but is not a drawing tool. It uses lines and line-based shapes which are filled and/or stroked. There is a "brush" tool but it works the same way, simply generating a smoothed line along the path you drew. Use Illustrator if you want to make clean, precise logos, labels, posters, etc.

RN

What are you actually trying to do? Maybe you don't need a vector painting tool.

If you want a vector graphic that looks like it was painted with brushes, you can paint some layers of flat color on Photoshop (that is, with raster brushes), then bring them into Illustrator or whatever to vectorize them.

This is some brush strokes in red (PNG), vectorized on Inkscape with Path -> Trace Bitmap, with the image object selected:

melviso

@somedoggy Thanks for the info.
@RN Awesome, The problem with raster is I am restricted by resolution when handpainting textures so I am looking at painting in vector and export in raster so I can export at whatever resolution that is required to keep the fine details needed in archviz.
Would be cool if there was a 3dpainting software that allows resolution independent painting. Talking about mischief, it keeps crashing at start off so I can't use it ( I am not sure if its a graphics card problem)It uses voxel why isn't that a file format that works with renderers?
The problem is inkscape is very restrictive. I was hoping for the paint brush in adobe flash but unfortunately that doesn't exist. What I like about abobe flash is the infinte canvas and how it works with the paint brush.
Mischief is exactly this as well. I can zoom in and add details and resolution is infinite but cant work.

pior

" Awesome, The problem with raster is I am restricted by resolution when handpainting textures so I am looking at painting in vector and export in raster so I can export at whatever resolution that is required to keep the fine details needed in archviz."

- - - - -

Tiling overlays and/or procedural textures will probably serve you better than trying to find a new workflow that is, very likely, not used at all in this field and will likely not solve your issue.

And besides that : as stated above, Clippaint/MangaStudio has a vector painting engine that is indistiguishable from their raster engine - but even that won't help you achieveing "infinite detail",  because the app will start slowing down when trying to display/transform too many vector strokes. Vector art is light for graphic stuff, but can become very heavy when attempting to imitate photos/paintings.

If anything Smart Object layers in Photoshop seem like a much better way to handle multi-resolution non destructively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

melviso

@pior I use tiling and prodedurals of course. I use this workflow when it's needed as I handpaint textures. This enables me to create accurate textures without any lighting information and I know exactly how they should look when lit. I don't plan to be painting 32k textures that would be crazy.
I work in archviz, like films, texture resolutions used are high due to the quality required. Of course, with games, that wont be possible.
Will look into clip studio.

pior

Your best option is still to post/explain precisely what you are trying to achieve, as I am pretty sure that there is a misunderstanding here.

melviso

No worries. Appreciate the help.    I am just checking out vector painting software. That is all. 

sacboi

pior

"Vector art is light for graphic stuff, but can become very heavy when attempting to imitate photos/paintings."

Yes precisely. I'm currently experimenting with a budget alternative too Ai, for generating realistic car drawings and viewport lag can be an annoying issue.    

edit: oop's a necro, my bad O_o

poopipe

Clip studio /manga studio is the answer as pior says. 

Lightweight, Cheap and very effective

I switched to it from sketchbook Pro when they started charging silly money and I haven't looked back

gnoop

I do believe a proper vector soft   in texture job  could be a great  and very refreshing workflow.    Basically vector shapes with bitmap and procedural fill + vector strokes for scattering details etc.       Unfortunately  nobody cared to do one really useful.

I once used Xara + Filter forge plugin ( some old version  that worked in Xara non-destructively).  Plus brushes that could scatter random objects as groups of color/spec/normal bitmaps inside same object  and easy  do "look" switching in between them with automated export.

It was a perfect combination of procedural and  manual approach I have never seen anywhere else,  not even in Substance Painter .

 But it's 8bit only  and  limited blending option so impossible to do proper depth combine for example.  

 I am still using it sometimes . It's so instantly quick, so easy and simple.  Like a breath of fresh air after Substance Designer  where you could easily spend hours debugging your own work  recalling how you did this damn mess a year ago.

Now Xara turned into weird "cloud" thing   , filter forge is no more working there.     If somebody would do Xara like soft working with both filter forge and sbsr or sbs filters   I would be super happy. Would instantly become my main tool.   I know such a thing would never happen     And Adobe would never make SD filters working in Psh or Illustrator.