Again I've been very busy with development and not a lot of time to think about blogging, so here are some images from the latest build and some new artwork

Long time since the last blog

It's been almost 8 months since my last blog.  Just goes to show how busy you can get when working on a new product.  We just release Particle 9, which is our new paint program designed to work on tablets and portables, as well as desktop.  It's not just a re-hash of existing tools.  It's really a refinement of them.
We've really focused this one on just painting, so we've been able to get some real breakthroughs that we haven't had in the past.  Anyway, here it is, PD Particle 9!

http://squirreldome.com/Particle_9.htm

Be sure to check out our black Friday / Cyber Monday deals.  Things sure are heating up in the field of CG as vendors bring out their new wares and off huge discounts as well, and it's no exception with us.  Celebrating the release of Howler 9.5, we are slashing the prices this week over at http://dan-ritchie.wix.com/howlerpromotion, so be sure to stop by.

Lightwave renders. Exporting OBJ from Howler

Over on the PDHowler channel on Youtube, we've talked a lot about the new features of the 3D designer going into version 9.5 of Howler.  It is now possible to export an OBJ file.  Below are some examples that were rendered with Lightwave 3D using Howler to create the landscape and texture images.

Simulate high dynamic range imaging with local contrast

As you might guess, we here are fascinated with high dynamic range images.  We may be an 8 bit per channel paint app, and there are some good things about that, but sometimes you want to squeeze as much dynamic range into a single image as you can.  Enter the local contrast filter.

No, it's not a magic bullet, but it can do some amazing things with certain kinds of images.

What it does is examine an image, and apply a dynamic range enhancement to local parts of the image.  If a part of the image has a low dynamic range, it is stretched out to the full range.

This has the effect of simulating the look of images taken with a high-dynamic-range camera.  Caution is in order, however, as this can also "flatten" out the appearance of an image that otherwise uses color and value to convey a sense of depth in an image.  It's all a matter of artistic choice.

Local contrast can also ruin an otherwise fine image, so editing may be required via selections.  It seems to have trouble with skin tones, but boy oh boy does it ever seem to work brilliantly with pictures of bicycles!

Raytraced shadows are going into the 3D designer today.

Howler 9.5 will allow the creation of erosion masks that you can export, or use inside the program.