New features in Krita - open source digital painting software

Krita Desktop is a free an open source painting application.
The next version of Krita will be 3.0. There is a lot of development going on fixing issues with shortcuts, issues with the opengl canvas, issues with icons… And making packages. Ubuntu Linux users can already use the Krita 3.0 Unstable packages in the Lime repository.

A small recap of the workflow improvements brought to Krita digital painting software this year.



Krita Animation and Instant Preview details: https://krita.org/item/krita-2-9-animation-edition-beta-released/

Free download link - version 2.9.9:  https://krita.org/download/krita-desktop/

GIMP 2.9 open source free image editing

The GIMP team has announced GIMP 2.9.2, the first major update to the open-source image-editing software in over three years, and one that brings significant improvements for professional artists.
New features in the update include support for images with 16 and 32-bits-per-channel colour, basic support for OpenEXR files, GPU-accelerated image processing and rendering, and two new transform tools.
Now based on the GEGL image-processing library
Many of the features in the release arise from the ongoing port of the GEGL image-processing engine to GIMP .
Originally created in 2000 by developers at Rhythm & Hues, GEGL (GIMP E Graphical Library) was used in the studio’s VFX-focused Film GIMP image-editing software, since renamed CinePaint.
Work porting GEGL to GIMP itself began in 2007, with the library initially used to handle colour correction, filters, and flattened representations of stacked layers.
Support for 32-bits-per-channel floating-point colour and OpenEXRs

In the upcoming GIMP 2.10, GEGL usage is being expanded to “pretty much everything under the hood”, with 2.9.2 functioning as a technical preview.
Even so, that means a number of features professional artists have wanted for a long time, including support for 32-bits-per-channel floating-point colour when importing or exporting PNG, TIFF, PSD and FITS files.
The update also introduced “basic” support for the OpenEXR file format – GIMP doesn’t support layered OpenEXRs yet – and an on-canvas preview for many filters instead of the tiny existing preview window.
In general, performance looks likely to be better in GIMP 2.9.2 than the 2.8.x releases thanks to OpenCL-based GPU-accelerated rendering and image-processing, although this is still described as “experimental”.
New transform tools, improved Blend and Foreground Select tools
The update makes GIMP’s existing tools GEGL-based, and able to function in 32-bits-per-channel precision.
The Blend tool has been updated to make the colour gradients it creates editable, while the Foreground Select tool can now make subpixel selections in “complex cases such as stray hairs on textured backgrounds”.
In addition, there are a number of new tools, including two considered “mostly complete”: a Warp Transform tool designed to replace the old, and very limited, IWarp plugin; and a new Unified Transform tool.
Other experimental tools, including N-Point Deformation, a more advanced clone tool, and a new brush tool based on MyPaint‘s brush engine, can be enabled manually by users.
Improvements to painting, colour management and layer blending
Painting has also been improved, with brushes getting Hardness and Force sliders on top of the existing Opacity, Size, Aspect Ratio and Angle options; and the option to lock brush size to zoom.
As shown above, artists can also now flip or rotate the canvas while painting, rather than just the image itself.
In addition, the colour management plugin has been replaced with “completely new code”, finally enabling GIMP to handle cases when one image is pasted into another with a different colour space.
Layer handling has also been updated: the Overlay mode “is not identical to Soft Light any more”, while layer blending can now use LCH/LAB colour space as well as HSV.
And finally, support for metadata has been introduced with an “experimental” dialog to view data using the Exif, XMP and IPTC standards.
Better Wacom support, non-destructive image editing to come
The GIMP team has also posted news of its roadmap for future releases.
Although no timescale is given, GIMP 2.10 will complete GEGL support, while 3.0 will “restore rock-solid Wacom support on Windows and OS X”, and 3.2 will introduce non-destructive image editing.
Availability
Although the blog post announcing GIMP 2.9.2 says that binaries are available on GIMP’s Downloads page, at time of posting, only GIMP 2.8 was available – at least for Windows or Mac OS X.
Linux users may have more luck with the GIMP package included in their distros, and anyone who really needs to test the new features now can compile GIMP 2.9.2 from the source code.
Read more about the new features in GIMP 2.9.2 in the blog post announcing the release

Shotcut video editor - 4K support in 15.07 release

Shotcut is a free and open-source video editing app (64 bit) for Windows, Linux and MacOs based on MLT media framework.

Version 15.07 of Shotcut is now available for download.
New features and changes:

• 4K UHD support
• 5 new video filters:
• Old Film: Dust
• Old Film: Grain
• Old Film: Projector
• Old Film: Scratches
• Old Film: Technocolor
• 5 new audio filters:
• Bass & Treble (3-band graphic equalizer)
• Band Pass
• High Pass
• Low Pass
• Notch
• Added Insert Track and Remove Track
• New default Encode settings produce a better quality H.264 MP4 file
• Composite now defaults to on/enabled for new video tracks

Quickstart

• You open files by drag-n-drop in addition to the usual menu and toolbar methods.
• MLT XML files can be opened as a clip; so, you can use Shotcut to test your XML.
• Tap J, K, L to control playback speed and direction. Tap J or L repeatedly to go faster.
• Tap I or O to set the in and out points.
• Press left or right cursor keys to step frame-by-frame.
• Press page up or down to step one second at-a-time.
• Press alt+left or alt+right to jump between start, in, out, and end.
• Right-click the video window to access its settings.
• Version is based on date. You can choose to update whenever you like and keep multiple versions (new versions are available monthly).

Useful links:

•  Video Tutorials
•  Keyboard Shortcut Reference.

Article from: http://www.shotcutapp.com/

New Krita Kickstarter campaign - open source digital painting

"Krita: free paint app - let's make it faster than Photoshop!" - Kickstarter campaign.

The second Kickstarter campaign for Krita development is doing well (16.000€ and 21 days to go).

Primary goals:

• Make Krita really fast on big canvases with big brushes
• Make Krita an awesome 2D animation tool

Kickstarter campaign link and more details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-free-paint-app-lets-make-it-faster-than-phot

Krita is a free raster graphics editor, designed to be a digital painting application. It has been influenced to some extent by software like Corel Painter. Krita packs with some key features different than most of its kind, including the ability to work with both bitmap and vector illustration.

More details about the previous release (from the first Kickstarter campaign):
 http://open-source-spot.blogspot.ro/2015/02/krita-29-open-source-digital-painting.html

Download link for Krita (Windows, Linux, MacOS): https://krita.org/download/krita-desktop/

Meet the Krita team (2014): Steven, Stuart, Lukas, Wolthera, Timothee, Boud, Sven, Leinir and Dmitry.

Free pattern making software Valentina 0.3 released

Valentina is an open source pattern drafting software tool, designed to be the foundation of a new stack of open source tools to remake the garment industry.
Small-batch and custom-sized clothing manufacturing is essential to create a sustainable future, preserve small- to medium-sized textile spinning and weaving manufacturers, enable independent and small designers and manufacturers to scale up to make a decent living, rebuild local garment districts, and reduce or eliminate slave labor.

Download link: http://valentinaproject.bitbucket.org/

Blender 2.74 - open source 3D modeling, animation and rendering software

The Blender Foundation just released Blender 2.74 - http://www.blender.org/download/

The new viewport compositing features in Blender 2.74 add ambient occlusion and depth of field controls to Blender’s viewport, much as Viewport 2.0 did for Maya. The release also improves Blender’s hair dynamics.

• Cycles got several precision, noise, speed, memory improvements, new Pointiness attribute.
• Viewport has new cool compositing features, outliner now manages orphan datablocks better.
• Modeling now allows custom normals, and transferring data layers between meshes!
• Massive improvements to hair dynamics and editing tools: a big step forward with more to come…
• A new tool “Cavity Mask” was added to  sculpting painting, along with other improvements.
• Great memory consumption optimization in Freestyle NPR stroke rendering.
• Grease pencil and Game engine improvements, and more…

Cycles Render

Several improvements for BVH like making it watertight, solving several precision issues and reducing noise
Optimizations: black world backgrounds are now removed from the shader graph, resulting in great speed improvements, many great memory optimizations
Nodes: new Pointiness attribute for the Geometry node, control texture space of one object by another.

User Interface

New Viewport Compositing brings Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field right into the Viewport!
View-depth can now be picked using an Eyedropper
Outliner: orphaned Datablocks Mode was added for datablock management, now allows deleting of entire object hierachies, drag & drop objects to groups.
The Node Editor can now show text-blocks in frames
Customizable camera safe areas

Modeling

Support for Custom Normals was added, and transferring data layers between meshes is now possible thanks to a new Mesh Data Transfer operator and modifier.
Tools:

• UV handling for Edge/ Vertex Slide was improved
• new inverse-square blending for proportional-edit-mode
• “Fit Camera View” now works for orthographic cameras as well
• new “Split Concave Faces” tool to ensure a convex geometry was added

Particles

Hair dynamics and editing tools were massively improved:

• Support for hair collision with meshes
• Simulation now happens using volumetric calculations for more realistic results
• Strand bending uses a more realistic approach
• Controlling of child hair shapes using curve widgets
• New “Spiral” kink mode to generate spirals at hair ends
• Toggle buttons for render and viewport visibility were added to the particle settings in the Properties Editor

Sculpting/Painting

Brushes/Strokes:

• Improvements to rake and random mapping
• Line strokes now support constrains to 45 degree increments

Texture Painting:

• Support for dithering for painting on byte images
• A new tool “Cavity Mask” was added that creates masks based on mesh cavities or hills

Freestyle Non-photorealistic Rendering

A great memory consumption optimization in stroke rendering was done.

Animation

Grease Pencil:

• New Editing tools like copy & paste strokes, duplicating active layer, …
• Enable eraser on the fly while drawing with “Continuous Drawing”
• Various UI tweaks such as color swatches for Stroke and Fill colors
• Grease Pencil data layers are now shown in the Outliner

Other:

• Improvements to the action management to reduce the cases where unused actions are deleted
• Pasting keyframes can now be done flipped
• Using a new “Follow” option, the animation editors can now follow the time indicator

Game Engine

Physics:

• The first contact point of colliding can now be accessed from Python
• Usability improvements

New option “Lock Z Velocity” to avoid micro-jumping

Add-ons

• A new Auto Tile Size Add-on helps setting up the fastest tile size for Cycles rendering
• Import images as planes now works for Cycles as well
• POV-Ray Renderer now supports volumetric rendering
• FBX and OBJ now support custom normals import
• New Python API functions

More Features

• .blend Files & Libraries: generation and saving of previews for materials, textures, lamps, world and images datablocks.
• Background images can now be rotated and flipped.
• Compositing: Plane Track Deform, Multilayer EXR nodes improved; memory usage optimization.
• Sequencer: Slip tool, Setting proxies improved; preview individual strips (feature back from Blender 2.4x)
• Added gamma node support for Blender Internal
• Added MotionTracking operator to filter tracks based on how smooth their motion is
• Many other small Improvements

Feature Videos

For a visual demonstration of some of the new features in this release, check out the feature videos created during the development of this release.

Bug Fixes

In addition to the new features, hundreds of bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

Synfig Studio 1.0 - open source 2d animation - Release Candidate #3

Synfig Studio is a free and open source 2D vector graphics and timeline-based computer animation program.
Synfig is getting closer to final release for version 1.

Some specs for the new version:

• Single-WIndow and Gtk3 UI
• Group transformations widget
• Bones / Cutout tools
• Bone distortion
• Sound layer
• Bones
• Frame-by-frame animation (bitmap)
• UI improvement
• Rendering speed optimization
• SFG Format
• Sound support
• Video import
• Vector drawing tools
• Scripting (python) (minimal support ready : scripts can be called from an entry menu)
• SWF export 

Download link Synfig Studio 1.0 stable release: http://www.synfig.org/cms/en/download/

 If you want to use Inkscape for vector graphics and then export to Synfig you need SIF exporter extension.

Update 28 apr. - Synfig Studio 1.0 is released

Musescore - open source scorewriter

MuseScore is a scorewriter for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It is released as free and open source software under the GNU General Public License.
It has a feature set comparable to Finale and Sibelius, supporting a wide variety of file formats and input methods.

Download link: http://musescore.org/en/download

Vim powerful open source text editor

Recently I had to edit a big database file (150MB) and my favorite editor Notepad++ (based on Scintilla) couldn't handle it.
So I had to use another program for editing the SQL file and here comes Vim power which opened the file as it was 1MB.
Vim is often called a "programmer's editor," and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It's not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files. 
Vim is designed for use both from a command-line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open source software and is released under a license that includes some charityware clauses.
Although Vim was originally released for the Amiga, Vim has since been developed to be cross-platform, supporting many other platforms.
Download link: http://www.vim.org/download.php

FotoSketcher 3 - turns digital photos into art automatically

FotoSketcher 3.00 has been released.
FotoSketcher is a free program for Windows which converts your digital photos into art automatically and in just a few mouse clicks.

You can download the official version here: http://www.fotosketcher.com/download-fotosketcher/

New features in version 3.00:

• New Painting 10 (brushstrokes) effect
• New "invert colors" function (in the Edit menu or CTRL+I shortcut)
• Integration of the "invert colors" function in the script mode (F5)
• Improved Painting 4 responsiveness
• Cosmetic changes to the user interface (especially when the program is maximized)
• New keyboard shortcuts (left, right and up keys) to move the divider between the left and right panes. Works when the main window is focused, even if an effect is running.

FotoSketcher effects examples:

FotoSketcher video tutorial:

Krita 2.9 - open source Digital Painting

Open-source paint tool Krita 2.9 introduces new workflows for HDR painting.
The development team calls version 2.9 Krita’s “biggest release until now” with dozens of new key features.
Although Krita has been around for a while, it has rapidly grown better suited for serious professional work over the past two years – development further accelerated by last year’s successful Kickstarter campaign.

Highlights of this release:

• new Perspective transform tool with vanishing points highlight;
• new Cage and Liquify transform tools;
• non-destructive transformation via transform masks;
• various improvements in deep painting;
• better blending in the Mix brush and assorted improvements in brush engines;
• new assistants to help drawing parallel and infinite lines, as well as objects in perspective;
• updated port of G'MIC to provide all the new features including artwork colorization;
• better support for PSD and EXR files, newly added loading of raw files, newly added support for r16 and r8 heightmaps.

New transform modes, HDR colour picking
Features funded by the Kickstarter cash include a range of new transformation modes, including Liquify, Perspective and Warp, all with support for masks for a non-destructive transform workflow.
In addition, the colour picker now supports HDR colour selection, in the shape of the HSI and HSY colour spaces. (The I and Y components effectively turn exposure up or down.)


There are also a number of changes to brushes, including anti-aliased brush tips, better blending in the Mix brush, and the options to save changes to brush presets on a per-session basis.

More Photoshop-like workflows for masking images and browsing reference material
Masking now works in a way more similar to Photoshop, with a new global selection mask, and the option to separate alpha channels into transparency masks.
And like Photoshop, reference images can now be viewed alongside your painting in multiple sub-windows, which are cascaded or tiled automatically. Alternatively, there is a full-screen tabbed window mode.
Lots more new features and pipeline integration improvements
Other highlights include a new option to split all of the flat colours on a layer into their own separate layers; and new assistants for parallel, infinite and vanishing point lines in perspective drawings.
Compatibility with professional pipelines advances steadily, with all but four blending modes in PSD files now supported, improved OpenEXR support, and the option to import RAW files.
There are also a lot of smaller additions and bugfixes, which you can find in the official release announcement.


Availability
Krita 2.9 is available now for most popular flavours of Linux or Windows Vista and above. There is a experimental and unstabl” Mac build  (OS X 10.9).
Read a full list of new features in Krita 2.9
Download Krita 2.9

The story of Paris-8 University going for Krita, Blender, Natron - Open Source CG software

In the last years Blender and now Krita had evolved on a steady pace which proved to be an attractor for newcomers in CG industry.

Alexandre Prokoudine has posted an interesting article about the switch to open source software at Paris 8 University:
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/the-complete-story-of-paris-8-university-going-for-krita-blender-natron

Let's hope it will be a serious push in development and will enhance the communication between coders and artists.
It's important to have an efficient workflow and the right tools with fast results.

An experimental short film named "The Desert of Sonora" ("Le Désert Du Sonora"). 

Inkscape 0.91 released - open source vector graphics software

Inkscape is a graphic design software - vector drawing and editing. It is free (open source) and is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.
Inkscape is cross-platform and has versions that run on Windows,  Linux and OS X.
With the new release Inkscape 0.91 rendering and filters have become significantly faster.

Release highlights

• Cairo rendering for display and PNG export;
• OpenMP multithreading for all filters;
• C++ code conversion;
• Major improvements in the Text tool;
• Measure tool;
• Type design feature;
• Symbol library and support for Visio stencils;
• Cross platform WMF and EMF import and export;
• Improved support for Corel DRAW documents, Visio importer;
• Support for real world document and page size units, e.g. millimeters;
• Numerous usability improvements;
• Native Windows 64-bit build;
• more release details and download links  

Known issue - easy fix :)
• On MS Windows when the desktop colordepth is set to 16-bit, Inkscape is unusable because of exploding memory usage. Please set the colordepth to 32-bit.

10 most exciting features in Inkscape 0.91 


Tileable Patterns in Inkscape

Blender 2.73 - new version of the 3d modeling, animation and rendering software

Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.

 List of improvements for the new version of Blender 2.73:

• Several Cycles Rendering updates, improvements and new features, support for GeForce 9xx GPUs.
• New fullscreen mode, improved Pie Menus, 3D View can now display the world background.
• Knife-tool now allows freehand smart cuts, and more improvements were made in selection tools, Bevel Modifier and Shapekeys.
• Unwrapping UVs was improved, strength is now enabled for Grab and Snake Hook brushes, better visual feedback mode for painting with masks.
• Sequencer now can show a backdrop, strips can be snapped to others along with other improvements.
• Freestyle NPR Rendering has a new SVG exporter add-on, along with other improvements.
• Grease Pencil had a major update, it is now possible to edit and animate strokes! New draw styles, and imporvements in user interface.

• Collada Importer was updated, improving the compatibility with other software’s bone concepts.
• Add-ons: FBX improved importing/exporting armatures, some Python API changes  could need some Add-ons to be updated!
• As usual several other minor updates and improvements, and lot of bugfixing also in this release.

Cycles Render

• Volumes can now be rendered if the camera is inside them
• Support for cubic voxels interpolations to avoid artifacts especially on low resolution smoke simulations
• Support for GeForce 9xx GPUs
• Faster rendering of homogeneous volumes
• Improved rendering with area lights
• Viewport specularity

User Interface

• New Fullscreen mode displays an environment without any buttons or other “annoying” user interface elements
• A number of Input Method Editors (IMEs) are now supported for complex non-latin character input (widely used in east-Asia)
• Pie Menus are now using a confirm threshold
• Pie Menus can now contain nested Pie Menus
• The 3D View has a new option to display the world background

Modeling

The Knife-tool now allows freehand cuts drawing and closing of cut-loops via double click. Selection during modeling has been improved by adding the ability to select similar regions, plus the select more/less function has gotten the option to skip adjacent faces. A few other improvements were made, like for the Bevel Modifier, Shapekeys

Sculpting / Painting

Unwrapping UVs was improved by using a simpler unwrap method. Numerical input is supported for changing brush size, detail size and strength. The latter one can now also be changed for Grab and Snake Hook brushes. When painting with masks, the face-mask edges are hidden to give proper visual feedback of what you are painting on.

Sequencer

Similar to the Compositor, an option to show the current frame as a backdrop has been added. Strips can be snapped to others by pressing the G key while moving them and their content can be moved independently of the strip itself (S). A few minor things were also made, such as an option to toggle all waveforms on/off, or drawing of meta-strip range while editing them.

Freestyle Non-photorealistic Rendering

The non-photorealistic render engine Freestyle got a new SVG exporter, implemented as an add-on. It’s now also possible to cache view maps and a few more options for chain selection and chain sorting were added.

Animation

The Grease Pencil was given a major update. As a result, it is now possible to edit and animate strokes! There are new ways to draw styles, like filled stroke interiors, volumetric strokes, etc. The Grease Pencil’s user interface (which is now completely defined via Python) has been improved as well, plus two quick access pie menus were created for it. Besides from the Grease Pencil update, there are some other minor improvements regarding animation.

Add-ons

Some updates were made for the Collada Importer. Compatibility of Blender bones to other software’s bone concepts was made better and the problems with “Leaf Bones” and that Collada isn’t aware of Blenders connection system between bones were fixed.
The FBX Add-on now uses some advanced handling/tweaking options for importing and exporting armatures. To Add-on developers: Some changes were made to the Python API, make sure to check them out and update your Add-ons if necessary!

More Features

Several optimizations: mesh deform modifier now uses SSE2 with multi-threading, compositor’s gaussian blur node implemented in OpenCL, vertex parent optimized for a few cases. In 3D View added GLSL specular transparency support for Blender internal materials, and support for specular highlights in cycles materials. Motion Tracking predictive tracking has been implemented now, enabled by default and doing magic under the curtain. Added shortcuts for masks and tracks copy-paste operators.

Download link: http://www.blender.org/download/