AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 1004112 times)

Offline Doppleganger

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2090 on: July 10, 2011, 04:18:05 am
My friend is a very talented composer. He just wrote a piano album and has done some work for DS and XBLA games.
He's considering quitting music. Show him THE love.

Visit his soundcloud and maybe contact him to compose music for a very very very promising game you're probably making.
http://soundcloud.com/zack-parrish/

This is late, but that sucks.. Don't let him quit. Zack's worked on a few games with my old company back in the day, and I was always amazed by his compositions. It would truly be a shame if he quit making music.

Offline Dusty

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2091 on: July 10, 2011, 04:28:33 am
I usually set mine to be pretty firm. Low sensitivity works out for me because it gives me more range between the lightest and hardest, but I do experience a jump from about 60% pressure upwards where it seems like its sort of uncontrollably going up to the highest pressure. I have an intuos 3, so it's not entirely the same as your problem, but what I do when I want good line variability without carving is to just set the sensitivity low (firm) and paint like I think Helm put it once in a thread about cintiqs, "homosexual watercolor feathering"... Which is something that, like you said, is hard to do.
I remembering reading something about going into the ini files and adjusting all the numbers manually but I can't find it. You'd think they'd allow you to set the min and max of the sensitivity instead of a single value :( Kind of got me interested in this because I was watching a livestream of Gabe from over at penny-arcade drawing one of his comics and he was able to swipe and create all kinds of dynamic lines so easily. I know there is a learning curve with tablets, but I hope it doesn't involve learning how to draw lines by hovering the pen over the tablet.

Offline Atnas

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2092 on: July 10, 2011, 02:29:57 pm
I've found it also matters what program you use. Paint tool Sai and Manga Studio produce wonderful wonderful lines, because they work with the pressure sensitivity to formulate corrections to your strokes and to even them out, so gabe could have been using one of those. Photoshop is much more 1:1 and blobby for me. Newer models all seem to favor lighter strokes... I tried out my friend's intuos 4 and it was MUCH more sensitive than my intuos 3 to the point of me not being able to get the right lines, and what Helm said about his cintiq needing feathery watercolor all lead me to believe it has more to do with the later models.

That said, I believe I found what you were talking about: http://www.zimbio.com/Graphic+News/articles/84/Wacom+Cintiq+driver+manual+adjustment+pen

It looks promising. It's also very educational to know that what it says is "firm" or "soft" doesn't actually change the pressure to get too 100%, only the values in between 0 and 100.

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2093 on: July 10, 2011, 07:29:22 pm
I tend to not overuse pressure sensitivity for inking, really. I set the driver to hard so when I carve the lines (and oh, I do carve) the difference from the soft stroke is pretty minimal. Enough for the line to be alive, really. And when I want even strokes for hatching, I use the correction tools in manga studio. Pressure sensitivity for line width is overrated. It's much more useful for brush opacity and other effects.

Offline michelcote

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2094 on: July 11, 2011, 02:30:52 pm
...so when I carve the lines (and oh, I do carve)...
I'm scared of destroying my new baby tablet, how much punishment can touch panels usually take? If I start "carving" into it it certainly would help in the comfort zone.

Offline Dusty

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2095 on: July 11, 2011, 06:17:26 pm
Got my tablet adjusted, so thanks! It's not perfect, but now I don't have to be so meticulous about my strokes and the whole "floating hand" thing.

Offline Ninja Crow

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2096 on: July 12, 2011, 09:21:03 pm
None of the 'cautions' that I heard about before getting a tablet seemed to be that big a deal for me, and I'm very happy with it...for pixeling, because I can work longer with less fatigue, and get more natural shapes.  For drawing though, there were two things I did not foresee:

The first was how little 'give' there is in the nib.  I expected a couple millimeters of spring in it, at least, for direct tactile feedback of how much pressure I was putting into the pen.  As far as I can tell, the nib has no spring in it at all, and making lines taper off is nearly impossible.  Is this normal, and will the manual driver adjustment help this?

Second, and let's say stroke thickness is solved, the other thing I hadn't thought of is that when you draw IRL you can turn the paper!  I would never be able to get the curves to my lines that I was used to if I couldn't orient the page -- or screen.  So I looked all over for some kinda hot-key driven app that would run on top of my GIMP or Inkscape, but found nothing.  On the SAI forum, though, there was a subforum dedicated to a program called AZ Draw, which seemed rather simple and unimpressive, but a video of it in action showed the screen being rotated!  Also, that demo video was pretty cool.

I tried it, and the program was far more impressive than at first glance, doing several things I wish that GIMP could do even.  You can free-rotate the screen by dragging -- yay!  (you can find the English version a little down on its home page)

So if these two problems are solved, I'll be in business -- perhaps literally.  Thanks for all the info, guys!

Offline Ai

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2097 on: July 13, 2011, 01:18:25 am
Quote
The first was how little 'give' there is in the nib.  I expected a couple millimeters of spring in it, at least, for direct tactile feedback of how much pressure I was putting into the pen.  As far as I can tell, the nib has no spring in it at all, and making lines taper off is nearly impossible.
Wacom Graphire3 here, and I agree with the first (no give at all, really). Not so much with the tapering -- you might want to check your pressure settings.
On Windows IIRC this is found in the driver settings dialog (at least for Wacom).

I do find it depends on things like the smoothing -- if the smoothing of your stroke is increased, tapering looks better. If tapering is really important, I like to turn smoothing up to the max.
Also, I always taper UPWARDS, rather than downwards -- it just seems to be easier, cause it's much easier to start with low pressure than with high.

Here's an example of tapering downwards (done with MyPaint)



Compared to pencil work, it requires a much lighter touch. perfectly doable though :) (and moreso if you adjust your pressure curve)

OH! Let me recommend Mypaint! It's infinitely better than GIMP for painting, of course.. and yes, it has free rotate (and a similar 'free zoom' mechanism which is also damn handy). I have them configured as Shift+Button3 and Ctrl+Button3, respectively -- Don't remember whether that is default setup or not.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2011, 01:28:30 am by Ai »
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Ninja Crow

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2098 on: July 13, 2011, 07:59:23 pm
Thanks, Ai, Mypaint looks cool -- I never looked into it enough to notice the rotate feature -- I've downloaded it to try out.

Offline blumunkee

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2099 on: July 14, 2011, 01:24:58 pm
Higher end Wacoms come with multiple pen nibs. The default has very little give, but there is a soft springy one. I believe replacement pens and nibs can be purchased separately.