Strange brush behavior, and Brush Designer not working

[LunatiqueRob]

I've been testing out Artrage, and there were a couple of issues that make it unusable for me.

For example, when I paint with a square/flat head oil brush, decreasing the stylus pressure results in the brush size tapering, which shouldn't happen, because I'm not using a pointed sable brush, and there's no setting to turn off that behavior. This is a huge problem because if I want to have a broad flat stroke that I gradually decrease the pressure to blend the current color on the brush with the color already on the canvas, I can't do it with the full width of the brush, as the brush head will taper and become smaller, resulting in a line. I don't know if this is just with my setup (using Xencelabs tablet), but if my pressure sensitivity is working fine, I don't see why this would happen.

Also, brush designer doesn't work--I can't see any brushstrokes in the brush testing window, no matter how I change the settings. Any stroke I make leaves no marks in the brush testing window.

Am I doing something wrong, or these are bugs?

[Enug]

Hello LunatiqueRob and welcome to the forum. With the oil brush, if you vary the Loading the stroke will end in a fade. The Blender tool can be used to blend one colour into another. Try the various presets - there is one - Just Blend Color which may be useful.

As for the Designer Brush - as long as you have Head and Grain selected the brush should show. It would help to know which settings you use. The image below is just random settings as an example.

102365

If these are not the answers to your question I expect Markw will join in.

[LunatiqueRob]

Hello LunatiqueRob and welcome to the forum. With the oil brush, if you vary the Loading the stroke will end in a fade. The Blender tool can be used to blend one colour into another. Try the various presets - there is one - Just Blend Color which may be useful.

As for the Designer Brush - as long as you have Head and Grain selected the brush should show. It would help to know which settings you use. The image below is just random settings as an example.

102365

If these are not the answers to your question I expect Markw will join in.

Thanks for the tips!

Someone from Artrage's team gave me to tip to delete the size from pressure in the stylus properties for the brush, which takes care of the tapering behavior. He also mentioned tweaking the loading and thinner, but they only address the brushstroke at full strength. Ideally, I'd want the brush to behave like this: When I press firmly, the load is heavy and the color is pure, but when I press lightly, the blending/mixing takes over and there's little to no load, turning the brush into a blending/mixing brush at light pressures. How would I set this up in Artrage? Right now, in order for the blending/mixing to happen, I would need to either let the stroke run out (longer stroke), or increase the thinner a lot, which alters the look of the paint.

Brush Designer actually worked for a little bit today--I could actually see the brushstroke in the testing window. But once I left Brush Designer and tweaked some preset brushes and then opened up Brush Designer again, the bug came back and I couldn't make any marks in the testing window.

[Enug]

Sorry I wasn't able to help. When Mark sees this post he will help you out - he's a fount of AR knowledge.;)

[markw]

Well, after June’s buildup (thank you June, I’m touched:o) I’m afraid to say that I don’t think I can suggest anything more really than already suggested by AR Support.

Unfortunately I don’t think what you are wanting to do is going to be possible with how the Oil brush currently works in AR.
It sounds as though what you want is for the brush to effectively change from a brush to a blender depending on pen pressure. Which is an interesting idea:rolleyes:

But sadly, whilst in the real world you can blend and mix paint already laid down on a canvas with a clean unloaded brush, in AR this has never really worked well with using the Oil Brush & Loading set to 0%. It will mix paint but you have to work at it!
I think maybe at some point in the past the view was taken that when it comes to blending and moving paint around, the Knife tool would be the primary tool.
This works well enough, but at times you just want a more “bristley” look to the mixed paint, like it was done with a brush, and unfortunately the Knife tool currently can’t deliver that look.
Fortunately though we now have the Custom Brush which can deliver a much more “bristley” look when used as a blender.
And actually this may be a possible reason, for why a times, you can not see any brush strokes in the testing area of the Brush Designer panel if your starting brush was a Blender.
Other wise, out side of those times, for me the Designer Panel has always worked as expected.
It could be that it is not interpreting the input from your tablet correctly, maybe:confused:
Dose this still happen when using alternative input methods, a mouse or trackpad for example?