Esotropiart

In my attempts to make sure I'm taking advantage of all the best freeware or open source graphics applications, I regularly search the internet for gossip on the topic. I learned about a couple such programs (Artrage, Artweaver) though a fellow blogger, Cartoon Monkey (Chad Essley). Since learning of these natural media programs that take advantage of features offered by graphics tablets and pens, I've been enthralled to make sure I'm not missing out on anything cool.

I recently came across a forum thread that mentioned Deep Paint, a formerly commercial product made by Right Hemisphere. The final release of Deep Paint (version 2) was released as freeware. Since then, the software has been revamped and released as a more powerful tool called Deep Paint 3D / Deep UV, with more of a focus for 3D texturing. After a bit of poking around the web, I found the freeware download and installed the software.

Deep Paint is an interesting natural media simulation graphics application. The brush tool is Deep Paint's primary attraction. It has a host of configurations that afford an incredible range of strokes and effects. Brush presets range from regular flat bitmap and textures to image hoses, cloners and image processing. The most interesting of the brushes are those that closely resemble natural media like acrylic, oil, watercolor, charcoal and so forth. Deep Paint, aptly named, offers pseudo three dimensional material manipulation. As a paint-filled brush is dragged across the screen, a malleable substance takes shape. Successive strokes reveal what appears to be some sort of liquid substance. The resemblance to real paint is uncanny. The effect seems to be very much like a low profile 3D displacement map.

I'm quite impressed with Deep Paint's brushes, but there are caveats or limitations to the illusion. Where the 3D material ends, there is a very stark contrast of texture that doesn't look quite natural. It is difficult to transition between the 3D look and other flat bitmap brush strokes, as there is seemingly not enough fine levels of depth to blend the two seamlessly. In addition, the lighting that gives the paint its 3D appearance tends to give artwork too much of a plastic look. Fortunately the direction and intensity of the light can be changed to create a more subtle effect. Lighting adjustments can entirely change the appearance of the image.

Deep Paint is a bit unstable. It has crashed a couple times while I was painting simple designs. I'm assuming this relates to all the 3D calculations going on. It's important to save your work regularly to prevent loss.

Advanced bitmap editing features are mostly absent from Deep Paint. It's no Photoshop replacement for sure. However, who would expect to find such features in a paint program? (not me - especially not for free!) Once a basic painting has been laid out, it can be exported to a variety of image formats (including Photoshop), and edited further using other software. Moreover, there are some basic graphics staples like masks, paths, layers, and a couple mainstay filters.

Here is one of my first experiments using Deep Paint. I drew out a simple bezier path, converted it to a mask and painted inside with a simple wet material brush. I then realized the shape loosely resembles a head, thus the name.

Deep Paint Blue Head