Alchemy - An experimental open source drawing app
polycounter lvl 17
Alchemy - An experimental open source drawing application
Over the last 7-8 months tacit math and I have been working on an experimental
drawing application called Alchemy.
Some of you may have tried Symmskribbl, which was posted on here some
while back. Alchemy is very much the progression of Symmskribbl -
with a broader aim to experiment with using computers to generate new
forms and new ideas.
Alchemy isnt software for creating finished artwork, but rather a
sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of
the creation process. Where you take those ideas, and what software
you use from that point on is up to you.
Right now we have just released the second Alpha version and would
like to invite the polycount community to check it out and tell us
what you think. As this is not yet a full public release, for the
moment we are asking people to signup to download:
http://al.chemy.org
To get an overview of what you can do with Alchemy, take a look at
the videos online here: http://al.chemy.org/videos
Check out the Alchemy Forum http://al.chemy.org/forum if you have
any sketches/artwork you want to post, or any questions/suggestions.
It is also a good place to ask about contributing to the project -
keep in mind you don't have to be a programmer. Ideas are without
doubt the most important part!
The project itself is open source, and we are working towards
developing an API for plugin modules to be developed by those
interested. Until then it would be great to hear ideas for new
modules, suggestions for the interface, and examples of interesting
drawing exercises (either traditional or digital).
Thanks!
Karl DD ( http://www.darcy.co.nz/ ) + tacit math
Over the last 7-8 months tacit math and I have been working on an experimental
drawing application called Alchemy.
Some of you may have tried Symmskribbl, which was posted on here some
while back. Alchemy is very much the progression of Symmskribbl -
with a broader aim to experiment with using computers to generate new
forms and new ideas.
Alchemy isnt software for creating finished artwork, but rather a
sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of
the creation process. Where you take those ideas, and what software
you use from that point on is up to you.
Right now we have just released the second Alpha version and would
like to invite the polycount community to check it out and tell us
what you think. As this is not yet a full public release, for the
moment we are asking people to signup to download:
http://al.chemy.org
To get an overview of what you can do with Alchemy, take a look at
the videos online here: http://al.chemy.org/videos
Check out the Alchemy Forum http://al.chemy.org/forum if you have
any sketches/artwork you want to post, or any questions/suggestions.
It is also a good place to ask about contributing to the project -
keep in mind you don't have to be a programmer. Ideas are without
doubt the most important part!
The project itself is open source, and we are working towards
developing an API for plugin modules to be developed by those
interested. Until then it would be great to hear ideas for new
modules, suggestions for the interface, and examples of interesting
drawing exercises (either traditional or digital).
Thanks!
Karl DD ( http://www.darcy.co.nz/ ) + tacit math
Replies
This sure does do a lot cooler stuff than I had thought about, so hats off to you! Nice work guys
we'd love to hear any ideas / suggestions for new modules and workflows. the emphasis is on this being an open source community project where any and all can contribute so feedback is key. the forum's all set up with this in mind so by all means give it a look if you have the time
thanks
But we both definitely appreciate all the kind comments!
As we are both big boys, we also want to hear about the bad points as well.
'KAIZEN' in Japanese means 'incremental and continuous improvement'
Thanks,
Karl
I think you could also improve on the interface design. I like the idea of keeping the interface out of the way, but I think having to drag to the top of the toolbar to activate it feels somewhat awkward. It would probably just be easier to hotkey out that function like for example in Photoshop where pressing the TAB key allows you to toggle between the two different interface states.
On the feature front, it would be nice to have a more extensive color palette than just black and white.
Hope you find those suggestions useful. Keep up the good work guys.
I agree completely with the hotkeys and have added it in here:
http://al.chemy.org/forum/planned-ideas/topic12.html
There are currently some hotkeys you can use if you hold your mouse over each item in the toolbar, it shows in the tooltip.
I think when the toolbar is attached it could be toggled on and off with TAB or similar, and when it is detached it could also do the same maybe?
As for colour... it is actually very easy to implement. We talked about this a little last night and think it is worth considering. For example, somehow randomising or messing with the colour could be interesting.
To describe Alchemy you could think of it as a sketchbook, not the main event but super important none the less. So my main question is... how many people use colour in their sketchbooks?
tacit math I believe uses a grey background - adding black and white to it? I tend to think great ideas could even be marked out with blood on toilet paper in a dark prison cell underground...
How Alchemy works is a little bit different from Symmskribbl in that it keeps a big list of points, and redraws each of those points on the canvas when you add or change something. Symmskribbl on the other hand, once something was on the canvas it stayed there as 'pixels'.
So Alchemy is more like a Vector application and Symmskribbl more like Bitmap. No matter how complicated it gets with Symmskribbl, it is always the same number of pixels on the screen. No so with Alchemy...
There are a few very good reasons to go the Vector route. Firstly it means you can change shapes once they are added to the canvas - eg. using Mic Expand or Random affect modules. Secondly it means the pdf data is all vector and a bit more flexible if you want to mess with it afterwards.
SOLUTIONS
1 - Probably the easiest/best would be to have a button or an automatic setting which rasterised the drawing. This bitmap image would then be put at the back of the canvas and you could then draw on top of it with more stuff in vector, using affects on only the new vectors. The PDF would look the same, vectors on top of a bitmap. This is not very intuitive but at least this way you have a choice between speed and vector convenience.
2 - OPENGL! Rewrite the rendering part of Alchemy to use hardware acceleration. This could be a bit of a sh*t fight but might be worth it. The downside is that in OPEN-GL land everything is a polygon, so a 3pt line is a sequence of triangles not a nice bezier curve... The PDF saving thing is also problematic with OpenGL.
For the time being, you can try turning off Smoothing in the settings menu, and also be sparing with lines over 1px wide - this will be uglier but quite possibly faster.
Haha, in fact it is fine for anyone to use that link.
The signup thing is mainly to keep track and inform those who are interested (who I am sure would sign up anyway), and also because it is not 'officially' public... unless you are polycount crew... or any other strays tacit math latches on to.
One thing that I noticed while using Auto Record with a time interval is that there's no way to determine how far along you are in each individual session. it's not the biggest deal, but sometimes during sketching I'll be lost in thought and it'll end up saving sooner than I expected and I'll lose the work. A little progress bar that indicates the status of each interval would be very useful I think.
Also, one thing that I found myself really wanting was some way to employ an eraser type function during sketching. You can sort of do this if you keep the background set as one of your primary colors (white or black), but if you have the background set to a different color so you can utilize the two colors there's no way (as far as I know) to erase anything. I was thinking that one way you could implement the function is similar to how it works in sculpting applications like Zbrush where the default state is to add, but if you hold a modifier key (in Zbrush's case, the shift key) it subtracts. I think this style would adapt itself well to Alchemy where you could quickly drop down some blocky shapes, and then briefly hold shift to carve out some interesting shapes within the larger forms
Oh and lastly, Karl, with regards to your question about using color, what I was thinking is just to allow you to set a certain mood for the sketching. So if I'm doing monsters I might use a pale red as my main color for the forms and maybe a brighter yellow as the second color to give a quick accent to specific features like eyes.
Anyways, let me know what you think of those ideas.
Just to follow up on the speed thing, I spent some time investigating OPENGL over the last couple days and did some tests. Unfortunately it looks like to tessellate (turn a vector shape into a poly mesh) is slow. So, for the next release I will be implementing a 'flatten' button (to rasterise the canvas) and give you the option of a more responsive canvas.
adam,
Thanks again for your comments.
I am a little unsure what you mean by the progress bar. Do you mean like a count down till the next save? Or some sort of counter to show how many sketches have been saved? When you said your loosing work, is that because of the Auto-Clear is on?
On a more general note, I think this project is going to have a hard time keeping the non-interface status. As more features are added these indicators are going to become necessary. It is just a matter of considering the advantage of having them there vs the distraction disadvantage.
A session import feature is also planned, where you can walk through the session (manually or automatically) and draw on top of each sketch. So again, more controls... but where to put them?
Erase... yes this has come up before. In the world of vectors, it is a matter of subtracting one shape from another just like in Illustrator. This can be done, but probably not in realtime. Meaning you would draw a shape, then when the pen is lifted it would cut a hole in the shape (or all shapes?) under it. I'll have to look into it more. In the mean time I think I am going to cave into adding colour... this way you can at least easily set the colours to match the background. Btw, are you using a grey bg or colour?
Thanks again!
nice
Yeah we initially received some funding from the Japanese government's exploratory software project. So yeah having a Japanese interface and website came about through that. It would be cool to get some more translations actually...
I am working on arranging some workshops at schools in Tokyo at the mo'. So that should be cool. All these high-tech class rooms with laptop computers... quite a far cry from the Apple IIE we used to get in our classroom once a month
Just looking at your site and pics, I see quite a few familiar faces
And about background color, I usually prefer grey or some type of pastel that's easy on the eyes, but I'll still use white on occasion so I can "erase" from my sketches.
gave it a crack, fun stuff. i'm sure it's been remarked on, but my main barrier at this point would be the relative slowness of each line/shape getting drawn. it's an interesting process, but probably not a truly useful tool until i can get faster shapes out of it. is there a possibility that it could draw the vectors at a lower quality or something? a "fast" mode?
Did you try with smoothing off? Settings Menu > Smoothing.
I am loving that sketch by the way!
Thanks for your comments.
I too have noticed the PDF animation. It might be cool to have some functionality that turns the PDF into a movie or an animated gif. Could be cool to share.
Here is one I made from tacit math's speed shapes session. On a mac I used Automator to export the PDF frames then Quicktime pro: http://al.chemy.org/video/SpeedShapesSessionExample.mov
If I am ever in Sao Paulo lets do the "drawing-with-beer-session"! I am sure some sort of drinking game could be made with Alchemy
SEKNeox,
Good to see like-minded people passing the word on.
Fair comment about the speed thing, but rest assured I am working on it. For the time being you will find having lots of individual shapes and/or lots of points in them is what will slow you down. That and (because of the way the built in hardware acceleration works) thick 1px+ lines it seems.
http://al.chemy.org/download/
Thanks for all you suggestions. A lot of them have been taken into account with this release, namely:
- Performance, this version is notably faster
- Colour
- User-assignable keyboard shortcuts
- Toggling the toolbar on and off with a key
- Background colour mode (fake erase)
Check it out and let me know how you get on.
Cheers,
Karl
.
from May 16 - 25 2008 Alchemy is being shown at the Shanghai International Science & Art Exposition
Exhibition website:
http://www.science-art.com.cn/article.php?id=2910
Exhibition venue:
http://www.pudongexpo.com.cn/
there is some small gallery space available and we're looking to get some prints made of peoples work / experiments with Alchemy to display. All credit will of course be due the artist and their names appropriately connected with their work
it would be really nice to see peoples process drawings ( eg. http://al.chemy.org/forum/sketches/topic19.html ) but any and all works involving Alchemy will be considered. so. if you're interested in submitting something and / or have any questions please feel free to respond here. or on the Alchemy boards : http://al.chemy.org/forum/
.
thanks
I popped a couple of doodles up on the forums there. Its a neat idea and I can see myself wanting to use it often in future.
great idea chaps!
for those not on the mailing list. there's a little vid of Andrew Jones playing with Alchemy at the Massive Black workshop in Shanghai here : http://al.chemy.org/
i can't wait to get home tonight and start doodling with it. with this sort of program, i don't think i could even resist taking my scribbles into another app and finishing them. not even if i tried.
glad it's for mac, i can't wait to see the expression on my roommate's face when i show him how it works.