Multi-channel layers and blending

kirkl
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Multi-channel layers and blending

Beitrag von kirkl »

I work as a texture artist and struggle to find a simple, quick and convenient image composing tool. Problem is that every image editing soft is RGBA only while I need depth, roughness. material ID and normalrgb channels too for each layer, vector object. Plus an ability to mix them together with proper depth Z combining, Something like Z combine node in Blender or deep pixel approach in Nuke and Fusion do. Imo Blender doing it the best way with its unique " ati-aliasing" checkbox.

You may ask why I just don't go for any of those node based and mostly free tools. The answer is I hate nodes , they are slow to work and quickly turns into a kind of Gordian knot. Layers often seems so much simpler, easy and elegant plus you usually do less clicks. I love how I can just select an object of screen and move/scale it instead of constantly building nodes and connect them together.

Photoline seems pretty close to be a nice middle ground in between nodes and layers . For example to do something like Blender's Z combine it really needs only some object transform links/locks in-between layers nested within different groups . Photoshop styled chain links maybe.

Or perhaps even better a kind of a universal way to interconnect certain layer properties. Maybe just formula text based, Xara styled names/tags maybe to mark connected layers.
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Herbert123
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Re: Multi-channel layers and blending

Beitrag von Herbert123 »

I, for one, would love to see an option to somehow interconnect specific layer properties between unrelated layers. I use Photoline for texturing as well.

Having additional channels for each layer, and actually render those visually - well, I feel that is a dream which will not be fulfilled in Photoline. Currently it is still troublesome working with custom channels: it is not possible to have custom channels for duotones, hexachrome, or any form of custom channels at all at the moment.

Depth Z sorting support would be great, not only for texturing: for photo editing this would be a boon to have. But it would mean layer masks in Photoline would have to support depth files. Would be quite an awesome addition.
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kirkl
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Re: Multi-channel layers and blending

Beitrag von kirkl »

Yeah, having too much channels would probably make the soft crawl slowly. Let it be just layers within groups and Photoshop styled "compositions" to switch in between certain layer combination.
But those links in between unrelated layers are absolutely necessary so I could set a difference of two unrelated independent layers as a mask for depth blending or output a mix of two layers as a mask to for some third one. In fact Photoshop can do so already but imo in some too complicated manner.