Brush engines & other features

[Leo Ki]

In the distant past I tried a variety of drawing/painting software but mostly stuck to two of them. Things are evolving fast though and I'm interested in hearing which ones you use and why you picked these over the others. I'm mostly intrigued by the various brush engines, however I'd like to keep this discussion open to any feature so everyone can find a useful bit in it.

Back then I spotted three different brush technologies: Predominantly robotic brushes, awkward traditional simulation, limited-use wild experiments. None of them was of my liking and I started to develop my own brush engine - only started, because I had underestimated the time this would take.

There are now maybe a hundred different applications, brush engines have gotten much better, some are configurable to an extreme degree. I guess my dream engine would be something midway between digital and traditional, with controlled dynamic color mixing but not all the way to impasto simulation.

[Pubic Enemy]

I've used Corel Painter 9.5 most of all. Painter is kind of like an idiot savant that can perform musical pieces from memory at a professional level but can't tie their own shoelaces.

The blending, the look of brush-strokes, and the handling of paper textures just feels "nicer" than it does in other programs. The only thing that it's really lacking is Photoshop-style opacity handling, which has been remedied in later versions, but I prefer to use 9.5 anyway because they mostly just kept adding ridiculous amounts of bloat and bells-and-whistles to later releases. Plus, long-time Painter users all seem to agree that it was the most stable release since Corel bought it from Metacreations.

I always preferred OpenCanvas for sketching though, because it's so light-weight and simple.


I might agree with you about what the ideal dream engine is like. I do not like extensive traditional simulation. It never looks as good as the real thing, and it usually makes the process of digital painting feel more slow and cumbersome, when the whole point of digital is the speed and convenience. Painter has a good balance of imitating some of the look of traditional art while maintaining digital speed, depending on which brush categories you use.

[JosephCow]

I've found the same thing. I don't really have much experience with Painter specifically (I tried the free trial a long time ago) but it's hard to find a brush that behaves like traditional paint in some way, and that you can actually control. Basically I have to use 'normal' digital brushes for 95% of my painting, and then maybe put some fancy brush strokes on top as decoration. It's really hard to actually use the paint blending simulation brushes for me.

I wish painter weren't like 400 dollars ugh

[Leo Ki]

Thank you so much, PE and Joseph! Adding Painter to my growing list of demos to try. But ugh, Corel added to Painter an AI that transforms a photo into a painting...

I agree that trying to emulate physical mediums might not be the most promising avenue. Since computation is very open-ended, we can clear new paths. And some engines might be doing just that, I don't know enough about them yet.

I found some interesting discussions in the MyPaint developer forum that could drag me down the rabbit hole. I want to spend the time I have drawing though, not making a tool that will, some day, allow me to draw :)

[Pubic Enemy]

I wish painter weren't like 400 dollars ugh

that's my other reason for never upgrading. My sister got version 9.5 with a massive student discount many years ago and I have never felt the need to upgrade. I'm not sure how they still have enough people acquiring it legally to stay solvent.

Agreed 100% on the clumsiness of paint simulation brushes. I think the "normal" digital brushes (with the occasional fancy brushes on top) are the way to go, and whether you use Photoshop, Painter, or something else is mostly a matter of preference. While Painter is my favorite, I'm not sure if I can say that it's required to make the most objectively beautiful paintings. But most of my favorite digital paintings were made with a Painter/Photoshop combo.

Leo Ki: That "AI" photo-painting thing is just one of many bells and whistles that adds pointless bloat for users who just want to paint and draw. Maybe they'll come out with "Painter Classic" one day. I would actually recommend downloading Metacreations Painter 6 from vetusware if you happen to have a computer that still runs Windows 9x-2000.

[fletcher55]

The advancements in brush engines and features have indeed expanded the possibilities for artists in recent years.  I find Adobe Photoshop remains one of the most popular choices for digital artists due to its versatile brush engine. It provides a wide range of brushes and settings, allowing you to create a variety of effects, from traditional pencil-like strokes to dynamic color mixing. Or another choice is Clip Studio Paint which is known for its versatility and brush customization options. It provides a wide array of brushes and allows you to create your own with specific behaviors, which can be beneficial for achieving your desired balance.

[Lunatique]

Over the last 25 years I have tested and compared all the notable digital art software on the market, both desktop and mobile. Last year I did another round to compared the most up-to-date releases on the market to see how things have evolved. I wrote about that experience in a blog post, but just so you don't have to go my site to read it, I'll copy/paste it here:

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In the previous blog post, I wrote about the various art apps I’ve been testing on the iPad Pro and PC, and since then, I’ve spent a lot more time with each of them. The portraits you see above, as well as the work-in-progress ones I have going on, have all been done using these various apps to put them through their paces. So, with some additional insights, I’ll mention the various pros and cons I’ve experienced recently with these art apps.

Rebelle 5 is such an exciting art software for realistic emulation of traditional painting, but after working in it for a while, I discovered some critical deal-breakers that unless fixed, I could not work in it (at least not the entire workflow, as I’d need to use another software to do the things it can’t do). And what is that critical flaw? It’s the complete lack of ability to do dry brush/scumbling. Even after downloading the additional brushes available and tweaking the brush settings, I was unable to create the look I use so much in my artwork. I created a forum thread about it, so if you want to, you can check out the example images I posted, comparing what Rebelle can’t do, versus what I can easily do in other art apps.

As for what I love about Rebelle, a big one is the ability to quickly change painting modes from heavy paint load and no blending/mixing, to two states of less paint load and more blending/mixing, to just blending/mixing, with a simple layout of the various modes as buttons you can click on. This is by far the most intuitive and useful feature I have ever seen in any art app. Yes, Photoshop has it too for its mixer brushes, but it’s in a dropdown menu, which makes it annoying to use (not to mention other annoying things about Photoshop that I’ll get to later). Of course, the awesome real media emulation is the main point of Rebelle, and I like its implementation better than Artrage, Corel Painter, or any of the other art apps out there. Another thing that’s great about Rebelle, is how easy it is to create timelapse video recording of your painting process and have it record automatically each time you boot up the software. This is something mobile art apps seem to all have by default, and desktop art software are sorely lacking. And it’s even more interesting that Rebelle was never envisioned as a mobile app due to the resource-intensive nature of its natural media emulation, and the developer currently has no plans for mobile versions, yet it has a timelapse video recording that’s only common in mobile art apps. I wish all other desktop art apps had this feature, instead of forcing you to use some desktop recording software, which is much more cumbersome.

Photoshop at this point is the juggernaut that most demanding professionals turn to because there’s a dearth of alternatives, and the need for compatibility when collaborating on commercial projects dictates they have no recourse. After over three decades of working with it as the main software for both work and personal art, I have a love and hate relationship with Photoshop. On one hand, it’s one of the most feature-rich, but its focus on photography and design while lacking features catered to artists, often makes it feel like a half-assed art software for people who draw and paint. But because of its age, it has by far the largest userbase, which also means it has the most brush packs, plugins, and other resources out there. One of the worst things about it is the brush management system. It’s so primitive with its folder structure instead of being tab-based, and because of that, third-party plugin developers created products to address that problem (I use Brusherator currently, but it’s a bit sluggish and buggy). And while the mixer brushes finally filled in a glaring hole in its brush engine, it still doesn’t have realistic emulation of traditional media (no realistic impasto with lighting effects, watercolor physics, etc.) Yes, you can use layer lighting effects to fake the impasto look, but it’s clunky and lacks nuance and convincing details. It’ll also be nice to have a built-in timelapse video recording feature for artists who want to show their work process. Over the years, it has gotten increasingly more bloated and buggy, and often I feel like I only work in it because I don’t have a better choice.

In my last blog post, I poopooed Corel Painter quite a bit, and after trying the newest 2023 release, they seem to have addressed some of those issues I mentioned. Switching brush size with the bracket keys is a much smoother experience now, but I noticed in some ways, they simply offloaded the initial lag to after you’ve chosen your brush size, because right after settling on a brush size, you cannot draw for a moment, while the brush engine is calculating the new parameters in the background–except now you don’t see that animated timer icon as you resize the brush like before. It does seem a bit faster, but it’s still not a complete fix to the problem. I still can’t get satisfyingly filthy-looking dry brush scumbling results in Painter, and its GUI–regardless of how they try to make it modular and customizable, still feels confusing because of the various panels–especially the advanced brush settings ones that have many overlaps. And the pricing is just ridiculously high compared to the newer generations of competition out there.

Krita gets talked about a lot in the digital art communities, and for good reason. It’s totally free, and its feature-set rivals some of the commercial software. I used it a lot for teaching as some students can’t afford Photoshop, so I’m quite familiar with it. I like it for the most part, but it’s missing some features I need, like good dry brush scumbling effects, or just great texture brushes in general (and yes, I downloaded a ton of brush packs for it, and also tried creating custom brushes). And it also doesn’t have realistic emulation of traditional media, which while isn’t a dealbreaker, would be nice to have if I want to stay inside of one art software from beginning to end, instead of having to export to another software for missing features. Also, Krita had been very unstable for me at some points in the past, so I wouldn’t trust it for professional work.

Paintstorm Studio is kinda like Corel Painter Lite. It’s easier to use but has less features. Its inclusion of many gimmicky brushes that no serious artist would use also reminds me of Painter. I’m probably more likely to boot it up than Painter, but like Painter, it lacks good dry brush/scumbling or satisfying texture brushes (and this is after I had bought some brush packs for it and played around in its brush settings). It also doesn’t have realistic natural media emulation, despite being billed as such (to the point of having a spin-off product called Realistic Paint Studio, which takes the brush engine and pairs it with photorealistic GUI that looks like a “virtual art studio”).

I really wanted to like Artrage, but after spending a lot of time tweaking brushes and buying brush packs, I still cannot get it to behave intuitively. The brush engine is not intuitive like Rebelle’s, nor does it have the awesome painting modes feature of Rebelle. And like Rebelle, it also cannot do satisfying dry brush/scumbling. While it does have a recording feature, it only records a script instead of a rendered video format.

Fresco is basically just Photoshop’s brush engine with a new GUI and focused on artists instead of photographers and designers, which obviously fixes the issue I have with Photoshop’s outdated brush management and feature bloat, but to have to pay for it separately (if you want to import Photoshop brushes or download additional ones) feels like I’m getting ripped off. It really should be part of a new pricing plan for artists who focus on drawing/painting, along with desktop Photoshop, or included in the Photographer’s plan that also includes Lightroom.

Artstudio Pro is currently my go-to mobile art app, because of its ability to import Photoshop brushes and keep them intact, and having most of the features I need while implementing them well. But there are a few annoying things about it I wish could be fixed. For example, when using the reference image panel, i you zoom in or out, it’s too easy to accidentally rotate the reference image, and I have absolutely no need to ever rotate the reference (or the canvas) because rotating the canvas is a bad habit that prevents artists from developing the ability to draw from any angle comfortably and accurately. But I love how you can mirror the reference image, turn it into grayscale, and use the eyedropper tool on it–I wish all other art apps could too. Another problem I have with it is that you cannot use gestures to activate the eyedropper mode in mixer brush mode, and must tap on the eyedropper icon to activate it, but it works when in normal brush mode, which makes no sense. Although it would be nice if there was realistic natural media emulation, but even the mobile version of Artrage doesn’t have it, and that’s been the software’s big selling point on the desktop. Maybe one day when mobile devices become fast enough (I’d assume the M1 and M2 chipped ones already are?).

Procreate is still what I use to teach with on the iPad, and I just don’t like its brush engine (mainly because of its inability to customize the rotation of the brush texture with intuitive control). Also, its inability to mirror the reference image or use the eyedropper tool on it is baffling. But besides those issues, it’s fine. Objectively, I don’t see why it is the most popular art app in the iOS ecosystem. Maybe it’s because it’s been around longer than some of the newer ones that are just as capable and better designed, and don’t have too many features that might confuse your typical hobbyist who doesn’t need advanced features.

I have always rooted for Infinite Painter, starting from way back in its early development, but currently, it’s got a serious bug that makes the app very frustrating to work with, and that is when your canvas is mirrored, if you zoom in/out, it’ll immediately flip your canvas upside down too, and you’d have to rest the zoom level to get it to flip back vertically. Also, I hate its implementation of reference image, because you can only enlarge or shrink the entire image, instead of having a windowed panel that allows you to set the zoom level within. So, if you have a reference photo of a person in a scene and want to zoom in to just the person’s face, the rest of the photo would also enlarge and completely block your canvas. How did the developer think that was a good idea?

There are many other art software for desktop and mobile, but they are all missing important features like good painting brushes, advanced brush engine, intuitive GUI, etc., for me to want to spend time in them. For example, Autodesk Sketchbook and Clip Studio Paint are both very good art apps for their intended purposes, but neither has advanced brush engines for great painting brushes.

Anyway, that’s my update on the art software I’ve been testing out. In an ideal world, there would be a hybrid of Rebelle and Photoshop and Artstudio Pro, available on both desktop and mobile, with identical feature sets.

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One thing I'll add, since that was written a year ago, is that Rebelle is steadly improving in all fronts and is now a formidable powerhouse that has overtaken every art software on the market, and in many ways, even Photoshop, with the sole exception of dry/scumbling/dynamic bristle brushes. Version 7 is in beta testing right now and I'm on the beta testers list, but haven't received my copy yet, but it's very likely they have caught up in that area too, because I've been working with them on that since version 5.

[Leo Ki]

Man, I'm now a fraction of an inch away from pre-ordering Rebelle 7 (currently at an 80% discount). I still don't see support for scumbling in it though. Does scumbling include slightly dragging the underlying paint or would that be a different thing? That's not totally dry painting.

I'm currently making a comic that is mostly inks and flats, but I'll go back to painting in about half a year when I'm done with the comic. I even see that Rebelle has enough layer options to make a painted comic, which is my distant next project.

Thank you for your extensive review and enthusiasm. I'm going to read it several times.

[Lunatique]

Man, I'm now a fraction of an inch away from pre-ordering Rebelle 7 (currently at an 80% discount). I still don't see support for scumbling in it though. Does scumbling include slightly dragging the underlying paint or would that be a different thing? That's not totally dry painting.

I'm currently making a comic that is mostly inks and flats, but I'll go back to painting in about half a year when I'm done with the comic. I even see that Rebelle has enough layer options to make a painted comic, which is my distant next project.

Thank you for your extensive review and enthusiasm. I'm going to read it several times.

They did make some improvements to the dry/scumbling brushes in version 6, and I know for the soon to arrive version 7, they have also made more improvements in that area. I have not received my beta testing version yet, so I don't know how far they've gotten with it. If you are interested in seeing the progress they've made, I have a detailed thread about the entire process of me bringing the shortcoming to their attention, experimenting with different brush settings, testing new version's brushes, etc., with a ton of example images. It would be an informative read for anyone who wants to delve into that aspect of their brush engine: Rebelle badly needs some dry/scumbling brushes | Rebelle .. (escapemotions.com)

[Leo Ki]

Thank you for the link, Lunatique.

I wish there was a way to script the custom brushes to create more effects. I looked into Rebelle's Motion IO scripting but that's for a totally different purpose.

I looked into Rebelle 6 Trial and the various painting tools I tried feel very comfy. The quick grayscale preview is super handy. However there is no quick mirror view or I missed it.

No export dialog, and the transform tool doesn't preserve aspect ratio by default. This is irritating to me. When trying to find export options under the save as command the application kept closing (or silently crashing), maybe because it's the trial version.

I am still to check out the pencils and ink pens for watercolor comics. No text support but that's ok, I tend to write the speech balloons by hand.

[Lunatique]

There is quick mirroring--it's right there on the navigator window.

[Leo Ki]

Thank you! I was looking under the View menu and had the navigator window hidden.
Grayscale is hotkey G, mirroring is Shift-F. And I can redefine the hotkeys. Perfect!
I discovered by chance how to draw straight lines (for comic panel frames), it's an interesting mechanics.
Only a few days left until the offer for discounted preordering expires, I better explore faster to make a decision.

[Lunatique]

Thank you! I was looking under the View menu and had the navigator window hidden.
Grayscale is hotkey G, mirroring is Shift-F. And I can redefine the hotkeys. Perfect!
I discovered by chance how to draw straight lines (for comic panel frames), it's an interesting mechanics.
Only a few days left until the offer for discounted preordering expires, I better explore faster to make a decision.

It's so cheap with the discount that I feel like it's a no-brainer, because even just for the amazing realistic real paint physics alone, it's worth the price. It also has tools and workflow that in many ways I wish Photoshop or other art software had. Just off the top of my head:

• Easy projection of the reference image right onto the canvas
  
• Better implementation of the Liquify tool 
  
• Realistic paint physics
  
• Simple and easy to use perspective tool
  
• Mixing palette
  
• Real paint color mixing (additive instead of subtractive)
  
• Nanopixels allow you to work at lower resolution and still retain fine detail
  
• Past switching between painting, blending, mixing, and erasing
  
• Easy brush size presets
  
• Paint will react to different canvas/paper textures
  
• Easy and simple recording of timelapse video
  
• Fast/easy transferring of layers between Rebelle and Photoshop
  

For the discounted price, even just for a handful of these features to add on top of whatever other preferred art software would be worth it.

[Leo Ki]

Sold! :) The fast switch between painting modes is a great joy.
Now to get my community account activated, that part has been buggy for 24 hours :(

[Lunatique]

They need to switch to a different forum system because the current one is horrible. You can't edit or delete posts, and there's no email notification for new replies (well, this forum ain't got it either...). They said they were working on it since version 5. I can't imagine it's that hard to migrate a forum to a different one, because I've been an admin and moderator in different massive forums in the past and seen it happen multiple times.

[JosephCow]

You should be able to edit posts! At the bottom of each post there should be an edit and delete button. Just hit edit >> full edit if you need to add or remove images. quick edit for just text. I'm not sure what's up with the emails. I think I get them for PM's but i don't really remember. I usually just hut view today's posts or view unread to see new replies. I do think the forum needs an update for sure, but as far as I know there's like an one mod here that is regularly active and I don't know how much control he actually has over this stuff.

[Lunatique]

You should be able to edit posts! At the bottom of each post there should be an edit and delete button. Just hit edit >> full edit if you need to add or remove images. quick edit for just text. I'm not sure what's up with the emails. I think I get them for PM's but i don't really remember. I usually just hut view today's posts or view unread to see new replies. I do think the forum needs an update for sure, but as far as I know there's like an one mod here that is regularly active and I don't know how much control he actually has over this stuff.

I meant the Escape Motions forum. The only issue with this forum for me is the lack of email notification for new replies. Everything else seems fine. Is the admin active here? Has anyone tried to reach out to see if that can be fixed?

[Leo Ki]

The Escape Motions community account is not just for the forum, it's also for managing the licenses if I understood correctly, so it better work before the release of Rebelle 7 or I'll be left out. Support is not replying yet. Meanwhile the only way for me to read the forum is to clear the browser cookies for their website.

Regarding the email notifications on Crimson Daggers, admin Dennis is active: https://crimsondaggers.com/forum/user-1.html and might have seen your thread (currently just below this one).

[Lunatique]

Regarding the email notifications on Crimson Daggers, admin Dennis is active: https://crimsondaggers.com/forum/user-1.html and might have seen your thread (currently just below this one).

Thanks--I've sent a PM and email and hopefully I'll hear back soon.

[maideng]

Rebelle is the best realistic painting software I've ever used. Plus, I also recommend krita, which is free and have a good brush engine.
More art apps here: https://pctechtest.com/20-best-digital-a...g-software