Rebelle: Experimental online paint software
escapemotions.com
escapemotions.com
With regards to drawing with a brush; it takes quite some time to get used to it because you can control the amount and type of paint that is loaded along your brush tip, as well as water, while also having different types of tips (hard/soft, ...). But once you somewhat get some control over it, you understand how the way you move across the paper will affect it, and either keep the tip in shape or make its hair disorderly creating more interesting texture. The point is that it flows in a continuous process, as opposed to painting software where you choose your brush settings in discrete steps.
The other thing is that colors don't interact the same way they would in reality. You can paint an underlayer and then paint over it with a very watery other color, and it just covers it up - in reality the watery color on top would a) be much less saturated and b) let the underlying color shine through or if you're unlucky c) smudge the already applied pigments below.
I also noticed that the water dripping seems pretty random, something I painted a few minutes ago suddenly starts flowing down the canvas for no particular reason.
The description says "with a focus on real watercolors and acrylics", but then again those are quite different painting models, it's unclear which one you are even using here.
The relevant "Two Minute Papers" episode is: https://youtu.be/b2D_5G_npVI
I'm not a digital artist, so I can't comment on how it compares with other available tools. But I had a lot of fun playing with the browser-based demo. It feels much more realistic than anything else I've used.
I love the channel, but he is very excited about absolutely everything.
That said it's still a huge CPU hog, particularly with watercolors; it routinely soaks up 6/8 hyper threads on my iMac. Simulating real paint as a physical process seems to only happen on CPUs instead of GPUs, so a lot of these apps get really chuggy on larger canvases, whereas simple stamping engines (like in Affinity Photo) run very fast in Metal, but cannot simulate paint all that well.
Not sure if you could do a physical simulation of paint in Metal/OpenGL/Vulcan etc.
The new mixing algorithm works pretty well, but obviously that's only one part of simulating painting.
One use-case: Looks to me like purchasing some of the software should be part of anyone's therapy budget (e.g. for one, they have mandala/kalaidescope painters as well, it seems).
Disclosure: no connection. Just immediately impressed.
I own nearly all of them, but none are very good at replicating the feeling of drawing on paper, stone, canvas. To be fair: the color model is not the same (so mixing paint is another experience), the media (tablet, with screen or not) has a plastic/glass feeling, the pen is... well, a pen, and you have to deal with the UI. In summary: it's a different experience, not good or bad, but nonetheless very different.
To draw as therapy, I wouldn't bother: it's expensive, cumbersome, and won't detach you from your screen. You will still have to fight all the possibilities of the computer to not be distracted. There's a lot of coloring/drawing book for cheap on the market. My wife do that a lot and love it!
Having a therapy budget being normalized like this is worrying to me... are you all right? like, collectively.
Why does it worry you? What should people spend their money on if not on things which makes them feel better? Why do you you care what one calls this part of their discretionary spending?
> are you all right? like, collectively.
This might be new to you but there is nothing “collective” about individual comments. You are reacting to one specific uterance from one specific individual. If you think there is a “HN groupthink” that collectively thinks this just a model in your head. A not so usefull one.
Other analogs: theraputic, playfulness, goofing-around, exploring new media and new sights, de-stressing. The OP sells their dynamic kalaidescope software for $30 IIRC, also iirc explicitly mentioning theraputic use.
And s/should/could/ in my post. "whatever floats your boat"
I guess if you really wanted to recreate the look of actual paint this would be useful but it would take so much effort to get a realistic look you may as well do some actual painting
Note: I had to disable uBlock Origin to get this to work.