Texture Designer - new image processing tool - released now
Hi, I'm the developer/owner of Crage Games and I think I have something that you just might like. I've finally released the tool I started to build some time ago.
http://cragegames.com/texture-designer
It is an image processing application for texture/2D/UI artists - fast, simple and powerful. It removes redundancy from texture design process - you can add/remove/change/test anything, any time you want. There is no cost of reapplying filters or Undo/Redo usage - something you have probably fought with all the time while using GIMP or Photoshop.
You can see for yourself, there are screenshots and a demo version included.
There's one question I hear often - "Isn't the price too big?" - so I thought I could answer it for you in advance: it's not big, considering the features I offer. Even the features I haven't implemented yet - I'm selling free updates of this tool. So whenever a new feature comes out, you will be able to download the new version and use it, without additional cost.
Feel free to post critique and suggestions as they will help me improve the application for my customers.
EDIT: Please check the bottom of this topic to see the short version of update info.
P.S. Here's some screenshots of the app:
http://cragegames.com/texture-designer
It is an image processing application for texture/2D/UI artists - fast, simple and powerful. It removes redundancy from texture design process - you can add/remove/change/test anything, any time you want. There is no cost of reapplying filters or Undo/Redo usage - something you have probably fought with all the time while using GIMP or Photoshop.
You can see for yourself, there are screenshots and a demo version included.
There's one question I hear often - "Isn't the price too big?" - so I thought I could answer it for you in advance: it's not big, considering the features I offer. Even the features I haven't implemented yet - I'm selling free updates of this tool. So whenever a new feature comes out, you will be able to download the new version and use it, without additional cost.
Feel free to post critique and suggestions as they will help me improve the application for my customers.
EDIT: Please check the bottom of this topic to see the short version of update info.
P.S. Here's some screenshots of the app:
Replies
edit: nvm, i just saw it accepts 256px image size.
I have to agree with CeeBee here, I can't exactly tell what use this will have for me. At first, I thought it was going to be an independent shader creator from the node setup, but on closer look, it looks like a Substance replacer on a smaller scale.
Again, I can't really tell. Maybe a small video which is kinda like a quick walkthrough would work wonders?
http://www.mapzoneeditor.com/
Trying to sell it as a replacement to photoshop is a wild stretch though.
Some UI things i think you should look at:
- Nodes should be available to insert from a right click menu.
- You cannot type in the number fields (i found this instantly annoying as the sliders are no where near precise enough
)
It is similar to MaPZone but my tool uses the GPU to process textures quickly and offers a few unique options (like non-separable blurring, in other words - a blur that allows to use any texture as its kernel).
imperator_dk:
I will consider adding animation support. It's more like a texture management&design tool now though. Therefore it isn't considered to be a replacement for Photoshop, only a tool that helps dealing with textures.
I will add the ability to type in numbers but at the moment I have some cool options you might want to look at in the menu which you get when you right-click on those "sliderboxes".
Interesting...
Rick_D:
It's designed to handle image processing (filtering, blending, saving, etc.) easily and often automatically. In Photoshop, you often have to reapply the same filters, resave the same images, there's no way of swapping source data quickly. But here it can be done easily. This tool lets you do all the boring tasks only once so you could work on the textures themselves instead. Experimenting with different filters and their settings is easier here, too.
Tutorial #2 (Focus Blur): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVz6nYCpO2I
Demonstration video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sER9saYtSY
New features include color curves, 3D preview, gradient design node and the ability to make your own texture filtering chains (to save memory and time)!
The user interface is also improved -- you've got your editboxes, Blender-style!
As always, you can find more info here: http://cragegames.com/texture-designer
*After summer, this tool will be worth way more than $100 in terms of features. So in any case, the purchase should be worth it.
Those tracks don't really have a name though.
With some clever tricks, you can also generate diamond shapes, bars and waves (linear gradient's repeat/mirror options). Hexagon shape isn't supported now though.
I'll add more generators (bricks, different grids and tiles, particles) soon. In a week or so.
And please don't hesitate to ask if something can be done here - I'm still trying to find the full range of possibilities myself. For example, I recently found out that it can make awesome terrain heightmaps. No one had thought of that before..
A traditional artist will always use Photoshop so there is no way you can ignore PS, so maybe support clipboard BitmapData, PSD format, offset filters with highpass normalisation, color variations based on layers, support photoshop/ AE filters,...
I would never pay for this not even 5$ the state it is in now, get a good base with features that make it stand out from the free ones and then were talking.
The reason this doesn't have special tools is that you can construct whatever kind of normal map generation you need here. You can simply get a normalmap from height, you can blend lots of normal maps together, you can blur normals before adding them etc.
That's good advice though, I'll add some custom normalmapping nodes in there to simplify the process for beginners.
The biggest differences from MaPZone is that this tool is much faster and can do a lot more. Non-separable blur, for example - allows you to use any kind of texture for blurring (as seen in the focus blur tutorial). It supports HDR intermediate textures, too.
And I have never intended (fortunately or unfortunately) to make the workflow traditional here. What I intended to design was a simplified and reusability-driven workflow that deals with the problems of the traditional workflow. No more resaving, no more reapplying filters. Just try something, if it doesn't work - try something different. Without the usual costs.
Even if you prefer a traditional workflow, this tool is useful for experiments, you can sketch up anything quickly here. Doesn't happen the same way with other tools.
But.. if you need something even more impressive.. I'll get a particle system in there in a week or so, you'll be able to use it as a texture resynthesizer and cell texture generator, and a particle texture generator.
Anyway I did play with it for a little bit...
You need to make this app more user friendly. Like, it was mentioned artist don't really like to work with sliders. In your color generators for example it would really benefit the user to be able to pick colors like they do in Photoshop. Visual updates in real time are a must. Having to wait to see the result of an update when I drag my mouse is really annoying and I feel like my time is being wasted.
A few things I think are a must.
color picker
Group your operators like add, subtract, multiply, modes into one operator so the user can switch modes like they do in photoshop. no one wants to dig through menus more than necessary. Streamline this app. do this for all your operators.
Previews... allow the user to set up how they want to preview their thumbnails
Real time feedback for everything. For example if I add two colors I want to be able to see the result inside the add operator.
When you connect two image nodes to an add operator for example, it be real nice to be able to swap the inputs by just dragging the line to the other one and they swap. all it be nice to be able to just disconnect an input by dragging off the connection line or perhaps using a mouse button.
keyboard shortcuts... if the app has them show them next to the function in the menus they are found.
Why in god's name doesn't the right click button bring up a menu system when I click on the blank space. When I click on the empty space I expect something to happen. Take any app we use for a test drive and we have that. Maya, Max, Silo, Photoshop... Make your app more user friendly. It's a waste of time to have to go to the top of the app to go through the menus.
It be real nice to duplicate things just by clicking on a node and I don't know, maybe holding shift, alt or crtl, and drag the mouse and a new node appears. This is really important... I was being sarcastic. Good programs have this since way back when windows 3.1 came out.
Being able to select multiple nodes at once and say duplicate would be nice. Having to right click on every node to duplicate, or delete isn't nice.
Use current app standards when dealing with navigation and interaction. When you don't most users usually just end up not liking your program.
Allow for the user to resize one node if they want to, with the use of their mouse like you would any document. This would allow me to inspect how the texture looks.
This program has potential, but right now it just feels very incomplete.
I believe it was mentioned but it be real nice if you could easily create animated textures that loop with this.
* A watermark protection might be a good idea, thanks.
* The sliders were initially added because they make it simple to see and edit the color values which are very important for precise color modifications + they had to work above and beyond the usual 0-1 color range. Photoshop cannot do that. I thought about implementing a color picker but there are only few times when it could be really useful. Most of the work is done with special values instead of colors. And it's really hard to display colors and their neighbor colors when they're outside the range. If you have a good idea about this, I'd really like to hear it.
* Some nodes are quite heavy in terms of processing work so I couldn't stall the app whenever the user felt like touching a slider, it would simply be an annoying disaster.
* I intentionally didn't group Add/Subtract/etc. operators because from testing I found out that there is little to no switching between them. Blend modes are already grouped though. Most of the other features are squeezed tightly together in nodes.
* About previews... what do you have in mind? I'll probably add some patterns for alpha / rendered channel selection but that's about it.
* The previews are already quite real-time (updated whenever the modified value is in a stable state again - slider released or something like that) and I can see the preview of two added colors. One thing I might have done wrong though - I didn't clearly show in the menu that the basic operations are vectorized - colors are not added, their components are. NewColor.r = Color1.r + Color2.r. Same goes for alpha. If alpha = 0 for both nodes, you won't see anything...
* I'll add the link disconnect/reconnect feature soon.
* Ok, I'll add the shortcut key info there too.
* The menus are not compact enough to spawn more than one menu system right in the middle of everything. But I'll think of something. A circle of buttons perhaps.
* Ok, I'll add the duplicate-on-shift feature now. I'll also try to think about the keyboard zoom/viewpoint move tools - they don't seem to be in the right place now.
* I am going to implement selection of multiple nodes soon. It's not simple so it might not come soon.
* Maybe you know a good guide or article or something that I could use for interaction standards? I don't really feel being up-to-date with them myself..
* You don't need resizing when you have zoom. You can use the wheel of your mouse for that.
* I'll think about animated textures. Might be hard to do but could be worth it...
Again, thank you for your extensive reply. Some things are really becoming clear for me now.
As for add, multiply, subtract, etc I see those as photoshop blend modes. Am I wrong with that assumption? When you work in layers in photoshop part of the beauty of finding th right settings for an fx is being able to see in realtime what setting the value of one layer over an other, and messing around with the opacity of layer. If we had to wait for it to evaluate the change to tweek settings the process becomes very tedious.
Here is an example, this might have been changed, but that's besides the point... Once a point in time in Maya when you applied certain function you didn't get realtime feedback. Users would have to go into the history after the function was applied to tweek it to their liking. The point is working this way is fairly lame. If I was to modify the value of a brown texture and tint it so it's more blue it's easier to do so if I can just pick a color by dragging and while doing that the user gets to see the change. That's what I mean by real time feedback, I'm not refering to 3d rendering.
The same is true when you change the values for the filters and any other fx. Part of making textures is experimenting, but for the most part having to change numbers in a bunch of different areas and hit enter to apply the result to see what happens would drive a lot of artist crazy.
some use cases I could see texture artist wanting:
http://www.twisted-strand.com/ut_tutorials/text_tut/index2.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3073/the_power_of_the_high_pass_filter.php?print=1
* Yes, that assumption is wrong. My bad, I should've written somewhere in the app that they're vectorized operations. Photoshop blend modes can be found in the "Blend" node. Add/Subtract/etc. are made for working with numbers.
* That's why I have sliders there - you click on them, you change the number by dragging, you release and then it gets updated. There's no need to use the editbox.. if that's what you meant by "hit enter to apply the result".
renderhjs:
1. Completely possible. http://cragegames.com/sites/default/files/blogimg2/grass0.jpg
The source texture: http://mayang.com/textures/Plants/images/Repetitive%20Plants%20Textures/short_grass_9091044.JPG
2. Particles can't be made ATM but otherwise this is possible too. The "Select color range" node is very useful here.
3. Not yet there but will be soon.
4. Good idea! I'll see what I can do about this. I'll probably enable something like this with the "1 input, 1 output" custom nodes.
Here's more textures that I have made with this tool: http://cragegames.com/blog/what-can-be-made-texture-designer-now
I hope these examples make the real power of this tool visible.
It needs more artistic input control such as Photoshop connections (PSD format, clipboard read / set, droplets,...)
And I'd really like to know what kinds of textures I could use to convince artists.
Just tell me and I'll try to make them ASAP.
Also, I have to say that I cannot update the app anymore if so few people are buying it. I have simply ran out of time and money. It just doesn't seem practical anymore to do this. As soon as I raise at least something similar in amount to a paycheck, I'll start working on it as often as I did though. I hope you understand.
They'll be here soon: http://cragegames.com/blog/animations-texture-designer
Is there anything I should add to make the exported animations more useful?