New fundamental improvements...

[Taron]

NOW, today I've found a fundamental flaw, actually. This little oversight had corrupted my very original concept without me fully realizing it, because it was partially working. I'm talking about the fluid drying. I always wanted it to be wet only where there is plenty of paint and if the paint barely covers the canvas, it would dry a lot quicker. Because I had a bunch of different concepts acting at once, I ended up mixing up red channel only framebuffers and actually alpha driven framebuffers. Since I caught it today, I've managed to finally make Verve act the way I always wanted it to. It's quite awesome, but also quite dramatically different than you know it. I'm willing to bet you will love it, though, because you can still have it like the old ways by turning off the drying or just turning it way down.
I'm still in the process of fine-tuning everything, but I may release a first test version very soon, if not even tonight?!
Again, this may scare some of you at first and it will most certainly have old settings that have used fluids act differently, but I'm convinced that this is as awesome as it feels to me right now.
I've also found another potential source for the blackness bug. It's very possible that this one is gone, too, but it's not clear... I rely on you guys to figure this out, haha, because I haven't run into that one myself in a long time.

So, yeah, this is a little internal celebration for me, but I really want to carefully prepare for a bigger change coming next...

That sounds very exciting, taron!
And frightening
Most humans don't like drastic changes, so I am already willing to ask for a - old version button - hahaha.
Without even knowing what's coming up.
Stupid me!

Can't wait to see what you are working on. It sounds like a sensation!

[Taron]

Well, it's really just a more natural, more expected behavior of the paint. I'm still trying to sort of find a magic middle between the familiar and the new. The drying speed will become a much more important parameter to adjust behavior. The result, though, I think, is outstanding. Paint won't just float into dry areas, like the whole canvas was somehow magically wet. It all becomes a whole lot tighter. Turning of drying still works just fine and the swirly wickedness commences. Also, [ctrl]+[d] doesn't just freeze the fluids, but it actually wets the whole canvas afterwards. As a result it's a way to, well, wet the whole canvas.
Anyway, I'm still noodling around, somewhat indecisively, because it's all more or less "magic", you know. We shall see!

Paint won't just float into dry areas, like the whole canvas was somehow magically wet. It all becomes a whole lot tighter.

This sounds fantastic! Does this mean that a very wet brush stroke will make existing brush strokes, assuming they have had time to dry, 'float away' less... or that adjusting drying time will affect that more so?

Either way, cannot wait to play with this!

We want a video of the new concept!

[Taron]

I'm still working things out, because it does re-open old considerations. I must say, doing careful working feels a more elegant and controlled to me already, but I still want a somewhat different drying behavior. Right now it has a bit the character of timelaps rather than realistic drying, so to say. I'll have to still play with it, but I may make some test releases for you sooner. Something we can play with.

Just played for a few minutes, but it's looking very interesting!

[Taron]

Yay! AND observe closing and reopening Verve!!!
...so happy I finally made that! I hope, it won't cause any trouble with administrator privileges or the likes, because it will create a "settings.txt" file, where ever Verve's exe is located. Anyway, there was OH YES one more thing. It's a little naughty, but I did it anyway: resolutions will snap to divisible by 8 sizes to avoid any rasterization troubles. I believe, it should work.

[Taron]

I'm about to release a risky update, because I am changing the way layer modes behave (additive, multiply). Until now they were REALLY primitive. They were ordinary layers, simply with different GL Blend modes. I never liked this. Now I've made a preparation for an even bigger change, but this preparation turns additive and multiplying layers into "flat" layers without a bump or lighting. That way they act much more controllable, I find, especially when one decides to merge them down to a standard layer. They will not add unintended bump. However, they will act strangely on empty pixels in the destination layer (alpha at zero). When you merge them down, empty areas will remain empty! That means, those pixels from the additive layer will vanish there. I think, it's quite nice, actually, but could lead to surprises. I'm not yet sure how best to handle it, if I should simply make those invisible in real time, I'm not sure. I'm not even sure, if I will release it like that in the first place, but well... ...change is gonna come!
Also, I have improved brush #9 a little. It is more "accurate" in the next release. Though, most will not notice, I'm sure.
I've also changed build-up parameter sensitivity, which I do really like, but you won't know until I'll have done the release, of course.

Sounds interesting

And about brush-improvement, would be also nice to have a bit better brush #7 and #8 too - some antialiasing in brush stroke direction.



I have draw some points along the "pixelstairs".