lame lemec's drawings!

[Elodie]

Waaaw, really nice work =D

I especially love portraits

[lemec]

A character design for a personal graphic novel project of mine...

sidekick.jpg (31.54 KiB) Viewed 31661 times

[hisko]

Maybe I ask something that you already answered somewhere in this post, but what brush did you use for the Betty Pages?
This brush looks perfect for shooting boards for commercials.

[lemec]

Hey Hisko,



Er, fast-forward to 3:35...

[hisko]

Thanks !
I already saw part of this strange sciencefictionseries a while ago, impressive.
Is the stylus 60 pen that you mention the same as the intuos 3 artmarker?

Edit: Forget it. I already ordered the intuos3 artmarker just seconds ago.

[lemec]

It's the same thing.
6D Art Pen for Intuos 3

[hisko]

Thanks, to me it sounded like 60.

[hisko]

In the youtubeclip you say that you hacked the driver to make the pen behave this way.
If I don't hack anything, will tvpaint still respond to the tip of the pen? Will it behave as a marker?

[lemec]

Sadly, no.

The hacked DLL took me quite a long time to develop and tune (I just spent several hours today, tuning it further).

The DLL calculates the "tip contact factor" from the tablet's Altitude, Azimuth and Twist readings and substitutes that into the tablet's Altitude variable. It also performs correction to the "Twist" attribute due to a 35° offset that becomes apparent when the chisel tip is flat against the monitor with the stylus tilted at a diagonal to the surface.

In addition, when the standard stylus is detected, it switches back to a "standard" Altitude coordinates. This allows me to swap between styli while using the same brush tools. It also performs a bit of noise rejection by way of a "dynamic dead zone filter" that tends to creep into the Altitude and Azimuth values when the stylus is in motion.

tcf.jpg (44.43 KiB) Viewed 31497 times

The Tip Contact Factor is determined by length of "x". As the chisel lays flat along the surface of the tablet, the TCF approaches 1, and as the chisel point enters a steeper angle, the TCF approaches 0.

toroid.jpg (59.05 KiB) Viewed 31487 times

Having all this control with the marker gets a little boggling, but being able to control angle and size and aspect and pressure in mid-stroke opens up a lot of possibilities. I used a footpedal control to adjust the width of the brush while I was drawing the "back" of the toroid.

TVPaint could be made to replicate the effect, but only if Hervé's willing to undergo the same trigonometric wrangling... Hervé, send me a PM if you're at all interested.

[hisko]

Did your tweaking result in a slower reacting pen and did you try the pen in painter or photoshop? Does it react the same way there?

I might have been a little too early with ordering it maybe. I hope that the Tvpaint-team will see the benefits of the pen.
When I'm visualising or drawing storyboards for commercials sometimes I have to make 65 drawings in 8 hours, so everything that will speed up shading and coloring is welcome. The artmarker would be perfect fo it.

By the way, your knowledge and drawingskills are perfect for visualing and storyboardwork. Have you ever realised how good that pays. Here in Amsterdam I do it only 4 days in the month and that is my monthincome. It probably depends on where you life if there are enough advertisingcompanies and agents around.

[lemec]

In terms of reaction time, position, pressure and twist are seemingly unaffected.

However, for the azimuth and altitude, the response is slower by design -- because I have to filter out the crazy jitter that the tablet senses. I use a "deadzone" filter, which means that tilt fluctuations that are smaller than the deadzone value are rejected.

However, I've made the deadzone automatically adjust itself

• when the deadzone value is large, the stylus becomes less responsive.
• when the deadzone value is small, the stylus becomes more responsive.
• when the plugin senses a large change in tilt, the deadzone increases
• when the stylus is moved very quickly, the deadzone also increases.
• when the stylus is moved slower or the tilt settles, the deadzone decreases at smooth rate that's proportional to the magnitude of the deadzone.

This means that when I move the stylus rapidly to make large curves, the deadzone increases to compensate for big chunks of tilt jitter, and it keeps the line weight from going bonkers. When I slow down to make small adjustments, the deadzone decreases and the stylus becomes much more sensitive to subtle movements. Think of it as a sort of "automatic transmission".

Now, as to getting the driver to work with painter or photoshop there are a number of issues.

• Every application accesses different attributes through the wintab API -- which means that new code must be created, debugged and tuned for each program that must use the driver. Debugging and tuning are things that take a long time because I discover most bugs and make most adjustments through the course of using my various tools to get stuff done.
• TVPaint uses almost every type of coordinate information that the tablet can provide, except for dual-tracking. The hacked driver is targeted specifically for TVPaint.
• Photoshop seems to only support azimuth and twist. It does not support altitude. Nor does it have profile curves. It seems a poor choice to adapt the plugin for it.
• I don't have Painter although it wouldn't surprise me if Painter used the same coordinate information as TVPaint. But I can and have customized TVP to the Nth degree and I've made it into the linchpin of my process. I depend upon its controllable, predictable tools to get work done as quickly and efficiently as possible. The superficial appearance of natural media that Painter provides just can't compete with that.

I am interested in storyboarding and concept art -- and I do those things for my own personal projects, Teaching pays the bills - it takes a little more work, but then I just feel it's more rewarding because it's changed my perception of the process countless times, and it continues to do so. I really enjoy explaining and finding ways to explain what I do, but most clients just aren't interested or don't have the time to hear me out.

[Elodie]

And you're a great teacher. You're always looking for really interresting little details and you know how to teach it.

It's a shame your clients don't benefit of your precious advices!

[hisko]

I just got a message that I can pick up the Wacom artmarker at a shop here in Amsterdam.
Is it possible to get your tweaked dll and replace mine?
Is it stable?

[lemec]

Well, if you're using Windows XP, then the DLL should work... but then there's more . Right now the thing is tuned to work with a Cintiq 12WX. Your tablet will probably have a few things different about it. However, I am willing to help you tune the DLL, but we'd have to work live, over Skype or something like that.

The DLL itself is stable, but inflexible since it's been tuned to work only with my setup and I didn't make a pretty point-and-click interface to customize it. You'd have to work with it for a while to "break it in".

Ya might also want to pick up a USB game controller, a manfrotto variable friction arm and a couple of super clamps while you're at it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3449&hl=en

If you get a Behringer FCB1010 MIDI foot controller and a USB MIDI adaptor box I can help you set up the DLL to use the two footpedals to throttle brush size and opacity. Mind you, setting all this stuff up is gonna take time and you gotta be willing to help me by running and testing and going through control panels, etc. (or you can install VNC or let me use Windows Remote Assistance on your PC)...

[hisko]

Hi Mark DaVinci, that would be great, thanks! I never skyped so I have to find out how to do that first. Must be easy.
Right now I don't have money for the cintiq, so I'll have to stick with the intuos 3 for a while. Is it o.k. if we wait for 1,5 week or so?
Did Herve pm you already?