Digital Art Community Forum for Artists & Creators

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:07:37

Sorry for posting it again. I mistakenly posted it in Flame painter support topic. I made a bunch of standartized tests. Here are some of them. At this point I really consider Height maps to be a downgrade in Rebelle 7. I get MUCH, MUCH better results when I keep them OFF at all times. It applies to any medium: oil, watercolor, pastels.. I expected this technology to upgrade my drawing skills not worsen them. I'm not sure this technology is "fixable" even, it seems more like a feture than a bug. If Rebelle is going in that direction, I'd probably stick to 6 version. Thank you for not deleting the older versions from an account page btw. Don't get me wrong, there are good additions in Reb7. But devs advertized their software with this HM technology telling how realistic it would look and feel, results below prove the opposite. Tell me what to you looks more realistic? I made all these tests in Reb7 but it probably would look even better on the left dection if made it with usin Reb6. Same brush, same pressure applied, different textures, Reb7. I used a Pencil category brush though I'm not sure it matters. The overall experience I have with R7 is mostly negative. Even when I turn the Non-linear opacity OFF and disable Height maps I still can't reach the fluidity and that natural feeling workflow I had in Reb6. It's really weird, feels like my brush strokes in Reb7 just don't affect textures that good as it was in Reb6. (even if I disable height maps, which is odd.) I'd prpbably continue reporting about Reb7 bugs meanwhile I'll continure using Reb6 as a primary software.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:08:07

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/41642/2024-02-04_22-02:04_1.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:08:17

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:15_2.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:08:28

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:25_3.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:08:39

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:36_4.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:08:55

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:51_5.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:09:05

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:04_6.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-04 22:09:21

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-04_22-02:16_7.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 01:30:55

Pastel brush (same brush) Reb 6[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/41642/2024-02-05_01-02:36_8.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 01:31:33

Pastel brush (same brush) Reb7[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/1/2024-02-05_01-02:28_9.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 01:39:48

This so to say "transparency" (more obvious when strokes are overlapped and at the edges of paint) is an indication a paint doesn't interact well with textures anymore in Reb7. EVEN when height maps are turned off. Also, you can notice there are no visible peaks and valleys in the last example in Reb 7. Those "echoes" of peaks and valleys look flat when in the example in Reb6 they are visible to the naked eye and prominent, I'm sorry but something is seriously wrong with Reb7 engine. I asked a couple of my friends and they all say Reb7 actually looks like digital media now. :0

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 01:45:29

So I guess problem is originated not really in Height maps, because everything looks flat even with HM turned off in Reb7. R7 Height maps just make all textures look even more flat. + nanopixel is still broken. If deva can fix all this - great. If no - I'll stick with Reb6. I'm sure some people will appreciate Reb7, it's just not my cup of tea.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 02:05:36

Some overlapping strokes example. Which looks realistic to you? Definitely Reb6, Reb7 feels digital now.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 02:05:59

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/2/2024-02-05_02-02:55_10.png[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 02:06:28

[img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/2/2024-02-05_02-02:24_11.png[/img]

Username: michaelws
Post Date: 2024-02-05 16:44:36

As I use mostly oils and acrylics, I was unaware of this. But you are right and your examples clearly demonstrate what you are saying. I agree the pencil strokes in Rebelle 6 look far more realistic.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-05 18:02:33

michaelws, thanks for taking your time to write a commen, oils and acrylics also have a lot of problems, unfortunately. Its less obvious because a solid thick paint interacts with textures differently but I'll make comparisons of Oils in Reb6 and 7 when I have time. Because it's not the medium problem, but a nanopixel/texture engine/height maps problem, I think. It's very hard to describe but it feels like a texture is like a transparent thin layer applied on top of our strokes, instead strokes INFLUENCING the texture. :0 I can basically recreate a similar to Reb 7 texture effect in Procreate now. Like is shown here: [MEDIA=youtube]7YrUw76IVdY[/MEDIA] (they also have an option in Procreate to import paper texture). On the other hand, Reb 6 texture and paint interaction was and is still SO good nothing stands close to that experience. Strokes have no weight anymore in Reb7, they are transparent and hardly affect a texture at all, especially when Height maps are ON. I just don't see a difference in results anymore when I change textures. All looks flat. People on forum talked about texture looking "transparent" and having no weight, I didn't get what were they talking about. I get it now. Until recently I was drawing in Reb7 and everything looked just wrong until I jumped back in Reb6, suddenly my style was back. I could feel the weight of the paint again and the most important - had fun again while drawing.

Username: cheriekitten
Post Date: 2024-02-06 02:13:49

just curious on the brushes that were used to paint these example strokes, is smudge on ? is smudge on paper bumps on ? and what is the smudge density set to ? these could all effect the look of the strokes with and without heightmaps on. i dont disagree im just curious of the settings used and if turning these off or on looks different to you.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-06 02:48:49

cheriekitten, yep I made sure to turn off all smudging fucntions, both brushes have same shape and blank (white sheet) grain.

Username: dreamkeeper
Post Date: 2024-02-06 06:23:11

Personally I'm not yet decided what to make out of the Heightmap thing. While I prefer the "old look" for some brushes, I can also see (and quite like) the potential of HM in conjunction with the new additions like background textures and dual brush or the new settings for 'Smudge on Paper Bumps'. Here's a comparison from a different angle - a single dab that has various opacity levels: [list] [*]1st column is done in Rebelle 6, 2nd is Rebelle 7 with Heightmap off, 3rd with HM on [*]tried to match the appearance from R6 as much as possible by adjusting Loading from 100 to 70 in the 2nd column, and Paper Texture Strength in the 3rd column (HM on) in R7 - for other brushes those adjustments may vary [*]without adjustments the differences were quite drastic! [*]all brush parameters are static to avoid pressure influence or randomness [*]all dabs were done in the same position and then transformed [*]Paper and Paint Texture at 0 to avoid influence of paint- and paper texture mismatch - paper is Hemp Smooth [/list] [img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/2/2024-02-06_04-02:21_Zwischenablage02.jpg[/img] First off, without adjustments the differences were quite drastic! The appearance (after adjustment) without HM is similar in R7, but definitely not the same (though in some parts I like the R7 version better). With HM on, I'd say that micro texture is more pronounced, whereas large scale variations are lost. Without HM there's a kind of a 3D-ish look, whereas with HM it looks much more uniform and lacks depth - much of the beauty of the paper down the drain, esp. with mid to high Strength settings. Also, with HM on, paper texture influence is lower at low settings and higher at high settings, as can be seen from the adjusted values in the 3rd column above. So with normal brushes, where 'Paper Texture Strength' depends on pressure, this wider influence range can lead to a very different feel. I've also made tests with regular brushes... ya know the ones with which one actually paints. However, because pressure influence, randomness etc. play an important role in how the brushes [i]feel[/i], it's very difficult to make objective comparisons here. But overall I'd say that using the exact same brush, there are indeed significant differences between R6 and R7 (HM off). In R7 the brushes feel more "smeary" to me, for lack of a better word. It takes a lot of effort to even come close to the behaviour in R6, which for those of us who have spent significant amounts of time creating their own brushes, is a bit of a letdown (we've been through this from R5 to R6 already, haven't we?). Seeing how much adjustment brushes need to work in R7 as they used to in R6 (or at least close to it), I repeat my suggestion to add a HM toggle per preset in the brush creator. That should give us the best of both worlds.

Username: cheriekitten
Post Date: 2024-02-06 07:41:58

i would say 6 by far has better textures and texture handling capabilities. there is almost something blurry like a gaussian blur applied to the entire canvas in 7. even if you open 1 of the same picture in 6 and 7 you can see a blur effect on the details in 7 vs 6. the blur prevents seeing pixels but comes at the cost of not being able to get sharp details. and in these example images 7 clearly has detail missing around the strokes and looks more blurry. it isnt how strokes work in traditional art and causes it to feel digital. the only thing that concerns me is that rebelle 6 had a strange issue where you would make a brush work exactly how you want it and even if dpi was off it would only work in certain resolutions as intended. in all others it would be blurry. this goes for the canvas textures effecting the strokes too and if you kept your eyes open while you painted you could see a small blur being applied in cases where the brush was not compatible with the canvas resolution. i wouldnt want that issue again. but i do want the crisp textures and ability to have sharp 1 pixel detail. id rather just have 6's texture capabilities than a height map toggle per brush. the heightmap is clearly not working as intended so it needs redone. we need a feeling of weight to our brush strokes. not fake blur that isnt possible in real life painting.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-06 15:09:01

cheriekitten, I noticed the blur effect in textures in Reb7. It bugs me so much. I don't have an idea either it's a nanopixel problem or textures are red wrong by the program itself. Everything is blurry, there is no sharpness or clarity like it was in Reb6. I agree height maps don't work as planned. IN addition if you look closely at the textures' surfaces in Reb 7- you can see that peaks and valleys are all of the same "height", textures lost their definition. I can only agree with your last paragraph. That's what I want as well.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-06 15:16:07

I don't even wanna try out new 7 versions anymore because to fix those issues I described programmers need to completely rewrite their codes and they probably won't bother with that. Maybe it's a good idea to return in one year and to check if those bugs are fixed, if no - we'll, then it's the direction they choosed then, it's not bugs , it's features. Majority of people would still use Rebelle 7 even when it loses to Reb6 big time.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-06 15:44:31

Dreamkeeper, toggle button is not enough. There are lots of things must be redone/being reprogrammed in R7. Of course, it's just a suggestion, the decision to make is by developers themselves.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-06 21:35:23

[b]Important update:[/b] I tested brushes with identical settings. One was imported from Rebelle 6 and other was created from the scratch in Rebelle 7. Their settings are identical, I repeat myself. Having identical settings they have DRASTCIALLY different results including texture influence. I have no idea how a brush can affect texture that way. Brush from reb 7 created there from scratch had much more texture in it compared to imported brush (from Rebelle 6) and actually behave the way I wanted it to, having a rich texture and so on. A brush imported from rebelle 6 behaved ok with Height maps being OFF and behaved wrong when Height maps were ON. (A bland/flat effect, brush had no texture in it) [b]My suggestion:[/b] Don't imported brushes from reb6, instead create your own in rebelle 7 using imported brush [b]shapes[/b] (png images) and imported textures. Don't import brushes directly from reb 6. They will behave wrongly with Height maps ON. I'd be glad if someone else test this just to make sure I'm right.

Username: BEL80
Post Date: 2024-02-06 21:57:28

Roksana thank you for this update. I think I am one of the few users still working with Rebelle 6 having downloaded Rebelle 7 but not yet installed it because of all the apparent issues. You have certainly saved users like me considerable frustration….I had a feeling importing v6 custom brushes to v7 might present problems so now there is a path out thanks to your investigation. Start from scratch and create custom brushes from within the v7 brush engine. Good to know. Many thanks. Is anyone following this topic experiencing good results that meet expectations with custom brushes transferred from v6 to v7? It would help us all out to know. I’m using an M1 Mac and a Wacom Intuos Pro. Thanks for your persistence Roksana.

Username: cheriekitten
Post Date: 2024-02-07 03:36:29

i have noticed something while watching this tutorial video posted a day ago on rebelle's youtube channel [MEDIA=youtube]xJZgH2Gzvpw:658[/MEDIA] timestamped ^ im wondering if that blur we are seeing on the edges of the texture strokes has been put there to leave room for rebelle 7's brush creator's new texture panel, specifically the dual brush and background texture 1 and 2. those texture's may only apply to the blurred area of a regular stroke. learning what these new texture panels even do has been very difficult. its tough to get it to do almost anything honestly. dual brush seems to be more responsive than background textures for me. so top example stroke is with dual brush , those sticks are specifically on the outside of the brush stroke. there is no option to change that. it lines up with the smooth areas on rebelle's heightmap strokes in the example images in this forum post. turn that off and now background texture 1 set to a Bouguereau painting by rubbing the canvas it revealed the background texture to be the image i set of this Bouguereau painting then background texture 2 is set as some speckled pattern and by rubbing the canvas this appears along with the Bouguereau painting but with a much worse result. so dual brush only works with shapes and those shapes are stuck to the edges of our brush strokes where with heightmaps on i would put a blurred edge. background texture 1 and 2 are literally enabling the image on the canvas sort of as a stencil but are only visible and able to be painted by that 1 brush it's set to. i would still rather have 6's textures, 7 is still blurry but now i think i see why they blurred out those edges. but attaching small shapes to the smooth edges of a stroke doest make sense as a " dual brush " if anything is a square png it also prints the square on those edges. which is worthless. you can see the square boxes being printed with dual brush on. and its all still blurry. [img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/3/2024-02-07_03-02:07_dual brush example.png[/img] [img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/3/2024-02-07_03-02:42_image (1).png[/img]

Username: dreamkeeper
Post Date: 2024-02-07 15:55:20

[USER=72294]@RoksanaDiamond[/USER]: [i]"Dreamkeeper, toggle button is not enough. "[/i] I didn't say it's enough. But after all fixes and finetuning by EM are done, there will still be differences between Heightmap on and off. And there will be brushes that work better with HM off and others with HM on. That's where a per preset toggle would come in handy, is all that I'm saying. > [i]"Don't imported brushes from reb6, instead create your own in rebelle 7 ..."[/i] You can import the brushes of course, just don't expect them to behave the same way in R7 as they did in R6. There are some adjustments necessary - that's what I was getting at in my earlier post. In fact I tested just that: took a R6 brush, imported in R7, then took a R7 brush and set it up [i]exactly[/i] like the imported one --> both behave the same within R7. If you try that, don't miss the curves for paint+mix and paint+blend - if no changes were made to those, they'll be switched to the new defaults in R7 on import (which imho should be changed). Also, many R7 brushes use background textures that then need to be disabled for a true comparison.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-10 04:15:31

Update: I returned Reb7 to basic settings and don't experience blocky "patchy" brushes anymore, including brushes imported from Reb6, no idea what was the problem behind this lag\bug. Also, seems it was "smudge on paper bumps" function which removed all the texture from examples (with flowers) on the right for me. But it worked OK when height maps were OFF So I guess I have to turn OFF all the smudge to experience a textury effect with height maps, it's a bit unintuitive. There should be still some texture presented even when we turn ON "smudge on paper bumps".

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-10 04:19:33

Maybe Rebelle 7 had some previous versions conflicting, because rn - no patchy brushwork anymore (after return to basic settings). Everything is very flowy!

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-10 04:25:55

OMG I'm so sorry for these recent rants. Everything is working great now!!! I was so annoyed by these brush strokes problems and It seems all these bugs were caused by previous versions of Reb7. Resetting helped!

Username: dreamkeeper
Post Date: 2024-02-10 05:40:35

[USER=72294]@RoksanaDiamond[/USER]: [i]"There should be still some texture presented even when we turn ON "smudge on paper bumps"."[/i] I have no problem getting lots of texture with smudge ON. But, as I showed earlier, 'Paper Texture Strength' needs to be set higher with Heightmaps than with it off. The texture just looks different (and to my taste often worse). There might be an issue on your system, where the speed of the stylus isn't detected properly. Open the curve editor 'Speed' tab (see image below), move the stylus over the canvas and observe the vertical line that indicates current speed. If for some reason the line hits the right end even at lower stylus speed, then you'd get overly smeared strokes. Lower the curve and try a stroke again. [img]https://www.escapemotions.com/community/uploads/posts/2024/02/3/2024-02-10_05-02:03_Zwischenablage01.jpg[/img]

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-10 13:09:49

dreamkeeper, I resetted Reb7 and deleted old versions of programm and canvases from AppData. Majority of things I complained about' just dissapeared. I'm out of words, really, lol In addition my blurry canvases I experienced are not as blurry (or not blurry at all) anymore.

Username: Vevo
Post Date: 2024-02-12 14:03:38

Hi RoksanaDiamond, We're happy resetting helped! Next time this happens, please send us the [b]settings.ini[/b] file ([i]Help > Show Library folder... > Data[/i]). Maybe some combination of settings is causing this problem.

Username: HEllis
Post Date: 2024-02-17 21:08:38

Roksana, when you say reset to basic what are you referring to? I'd like to know this in the event I experience problems. I have noticed some differences in brushes I have imported from Rebelle 6. I will have to check what Dreamkeeper mentioned about the graph settings for paint and blend, etc.

Username: RoksanaDiamond
Post Date: 2024-02-18 17:05:16

HEllis, in my case it wasn't only brush problems, but also very blurry canvas, nanopixel and texture problems. Check the "watercolor edge problems" topic, I described Rebelle reset there.