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Thread: Has Ambient Design given up on ArtRage Vitae?

  1. #1
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    Question Has Ambient Design given up on ArtRage Vitae?

    It's hard to believe that there have been no updates to Vitae since it's release.
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  2. #2
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    I really don’t know, but I understand why you might think that :-)
    Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua (“I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past”).

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  3. #3
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    Unhappy

    I was thinking the same thing seeing no updates for such a long time - I really love AR, yet seeing how the rest of the digital painting tools get updated like crazy (i.e. rebelle, krita, etc.) makes me wonder if it's still a viable solution in the longer term.

    I had so many plans to create quality sets of brush packs, canvases, quality samples and so on, but more and more people seem to stop using AR and switching to more up-to-date tools, which would make my efforts a waste of time if AR dies. Don't get me wrong, I tried all the other tools out there (some of which have AMAZING brush engines), but AR is still unbeatable at the traditional paint look - it'd be a real pity to see it fade away like this

    If it was updated more frequently, I wouldn't even think about testing other tools, but right now I'm at the crossroads regularly testing other tools in the hope that something great like AR pops up that is more up-to-date and its developers more invested in it.

    P.S. I just wish AR's developers would give a sign, like tell us where AR's future is going, if there are any more plans for it, so that I (and many others) could either stop hunting for alternatives and focus on AR, or stop using AR and find an alternative if it doesn't have a future anymore... I don't understand their silence :-(

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Woofy31 View Post
    I was thinking the same thing seeing no updates for such a long time - I really love AR, yet seeing how the rest of the digital painting tools get updated like crazy (i.e. rebelle, krita, etc.) makes me wonder if it's still a viable solution in the longer term.

    I had so many plans to create quality sets of brush packs, canvases, quality samples and so on, but more and more people seem to stop using AR and switching to more up-to-date tools
    I don't think there should be anything stopping you from creating custom brushes and canvas variations to supplement your workflow, you can transfer those between artrage and other apps as well.

    that's what I personally do with artrage and clip studio paint at the moment. I brought my custom brush set from corel painter into artrage many years ago, and, generally speaking, I prefer the way artrage works with the same brush sources.

    artrage for desktop gets quiet updates every other year on average, so I haven't been expecting anything to arrive in 2022.

    previous releases came out as follows:

    2021, September - vitae

    2019, June - AR 6

    2017, February - AR 5.

    most new features rebelle 6 introduced were also already present in artrage.

    I personally only miss layer masking out of what they showcased, but I have an other app to do masking and compositing with artrage source files, so it's not that much of a big deal.
    blur filters are bundled for free in krita, or can be added into artrage by purchasing photographer's bokeh plugins.

    rebelle boasts enhanced physically superior color mixing for two versions straight now, but both old and new pigment systems they have to me look dead and synthetic compared to color blending that artrage had since the very start. they water fluid engine still creates the most beautiful digital watercolors to date, but I wouldn't say the app really made so much progress otherwise.

    Quote Originally Posted by Woofy31 View Post
    I don't understand their silence :-(
    I just think they're too busy working on the app?

  5. #5
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    Aug 2020
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    Same thoughts

    Quote Originally Posted by symson View Post
    It's hard to believe that there have been no updates to Vitae since it's release.
    I was thinking exactly the same.
    Ironically the windows store / Apple Store was "sold" with easier updates in mind.
    Last edited by kris_lap; 02-04-2023 at 07:23 AM.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by nekomata View Post
    artrage for desktop gets quiet updates every other year on average, so I haven't been expecting anything to arrive in 2022.
    It would of course be nice if they would fix bugs from time to time, as developers of other apps do. I'm still on ArtRage 6, and there haven't been any updates since late 2019, as far as I can see, even there are at least three well known bugs. That's one of the reasons why I didn't purchase Vitae. I'm sure that there will be no more updates for ArtRage 6, but as far as I read here on this forums, at least one of the three bugs still exists, even in Vitae. I suspect the others do too. And I wouldn't be surprised if they would still exist in the next version of ArtRage. That's very disappointing. ArtRage is still my favorite painting app, but I'm afraid it will not have a future if the developers neglect their product this way and ignore the client satisfaction so much and continuously for years.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Somerset View Post
    It would of course be nice if they would fix bugs from time to time, as developers of other apps do. I'm still on ArtRage 6, and there haven't been any updates since late 2019, as far as I can see, even there are at least three well known bugs. That's one of the reasons why I didn't purchase Vitae. I'm sure that there will be no more updates for ArtRage 6, but as far as I read here on this forums, at least one of the three bugs still exists, even in Vitae. I suspect the others do too. And I wouldn't be surprised if they would still exist in the next version of ArtRage. That's very disappointing. ArtRage is still my favorite painting app, but I'm afraid it will not have a future if the developers neglect their product this way and ignore the client satisfaction so much and continuously for years.
    can you pull up some bug reports and link them here so that they will be sorted in one place, and someone at the team will have a chance to look again on what's going on?


    I'm on AR6 as well; I have occasional recurring crashes if I transform heavy layered and grouped content (and forget to save before doing that... ... ...), but I can't think of any bugs that would be a problem for my workflow, partially because I use a fairly small toolset which at this point has been serving my needs flawlessly.

    I'm optimistic in regards to artrage staying both developing and competitive, which might be a bit of brand loyalty in me outweighing the future release expectations, but for a program with a small core team, they're doing well.

    I had high hopes for another painting package that was shaping out into a corel painter killer for a few years before fizzling out like a storm in a cup of paint thinner (we now get one annual upgrade with no major brush core upgrades since 2021), and everyone else still can't rival what artrage has as far as paint and canvas simulations are concerned.

    I go back to my traditional sketchbooks and albums more often now if I get burnt out of digital media, and it helps coping with long digital development cycles.

  8. #8
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    Hi nekomata!

    The bugs I'm talking about are the following:

    1. If I drag a sticker onto a document in Docking Mode, the Docking Mode crashes, all docks are gone and I have to rearrange them all. This only happens if I drag the sticker, not if I double click it. However, it often happens that I don't think of it, and it is always annoying. I reported that years ago, and someone, I think markw, confirmed that it happens to him too.

    2. If I apply an outline Layer Effect ("Stroke") to an object on a layer, save the document, close it and reopen it, the outline is gone. Weird enough, the thumbnail shows it, but it is not saved in the document. This bug has been reported years ago too. Don't remember if I did it. Initially it was another user that reported this bug in the forum.

    3. If I save reference images of one document in the Toolbox, then work on another document and reload the first document again, I also have to reload the Toolbox again. Don't know if this is intended. But the real problem is that the reference images are not really saved in the Toolbox. That must be a bug, because there is an option to save the images in the Toolbox. I don't know if this bug has been reported. I don't even know where to report bugs, because I wasn't busy in this forum for a very long time and I can't find a bug tracker here. Might be too late for ArtRage 6 anyway.

    I think about going a bit back to my analogue roots too. But I bought a Wacom Cintiq some month ago and of course also want to take some profit from this investment. I still hope that ArtRage will come back to life and away from the Microsoft Store. ArtRage 6 of course still works almost fine for me, but I would wish that there would come some relevant inventions like color management, and maybe some progress that makes the tools more sophisticated. E.G. watercolor effects like in Rebelle, a blur adjustment for stencil edges or so, things like that. Something that could be a motivation for me to invest money into an upgrade. Vitae unfortunately still hasn't convinced me.

    By the way, I'm on Windows 10.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Somerset View Post
    Hi nekomata!
    3. If I save reference images of one document in the Toolbox, then work on another document and reload the first document again, I also have to reload the Toolbox again. Don't know if this is intended. But the real problem is that the reference images are not really saved in the Toolbox. That must be a bug, because there is an option to save the images in the Toolbox. I don't know if this bug has been reported. I don't even know where to report bugs, because I wasn't busy in this forum for a very long time and I can't find a bug tracker here. Might be too late for ArtRage 6 anyway.
    in regards to the bug reports -

    1) stroke bug - I can replicate it here as well as the sticker pulldown action corrupting the docked palettes, which does not lead to a crash here, but it is unfortunate. I hope you have a stable earlier AR version for this tool somewhere if you use stickers often.

    2) I can actually confirm that toolbox in artrage 6 works in a strange way, particularly, it fails to recognize different documents; also, if I start working on an image that has a pre-saved toolbox in it, close this image at some point, and start working on another image w/o quitting artrage, chances are the original toolbox will be gone.

    I ended up making and saving two types of toolboxes - drawing tools in one, and painting tools in one, and I pre-load them before starting a painting session, but this is quite useless for someone using toolboxes as a way to store references (I had no clue they could be placed there, btw.)

    since there was no mac demo for AR vitae, I couldn't verify if this issue was or was not resolved.

    I hope it will get addressed eventually, but, again, there're constraints to having a small team, and some features in my opinion are better delegated to a specialized app. I've never used the design tools which were added in artrage 5, but I understand the frustration.
    Last edited by nekomata; 02-07-2023 at 06:09 PM.

  10. #10
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    Hi Somerset, nekomata,
    The Sticker dragging and Layer Effects bugs are fixed in ARV but not in AR6.
    As AR6 is now a legacy app, and only being maintained for OS compatibility presently, I think it unlikely these bugs will get fixed in it.

    Sadly the vagaries of the Toolbox behaviour are still present. Notably it’s habit of sometimes forgetting what items should be in any given Toolbox when switching between paintings.
    Saving out Toolboxes as and when they are modified beforehand and reloading them if/when needed can help to some degree when this happens but because of the limitations of what can be stored in a Toolbox it’s not a perfect workaround.

    The manual has the following to say about Toolboxes:
    "…The contents of the Toolbox are automatically saved with your painting and restored when you load it.
    There may be cases where you want to save a Toolbox to disk for use later however, and you can do this using the menu button in the Toolbox Panel.
    Because some of the items that are stored in the Toolbox are only relevant to a specific painting file however, not all items will be saved. Any item in the Toolbox that represents an active item in your painting will not be saved when you export the Toolbox to its own file. This includes:
    1: Layers.
    2: Stencils.
    3: Reference Images, Scraps, Views.
    Items that represent either a file on disk or an object that does not rely on a specific painting will be saved when you save the Toolbox file…"


    It’s worth noting here that no actual items are “physically” stored in a Toolbox.
    Rather the entries in them are mostly shortcuts to where that item is actually kept on Disc.
    So, whilst it’s understandable that, as currently implemented, active elements as listed above can’t be Saved in a toolbox, I do think that it should actually be possible to Save; Reference images and Stencils in a Toolbox as both these items do actually exist in a fixed form and location on Disc outside of any given painting.
    And that it is the locations of these “source” versions of Reference images and Stencils that could be saved within a Toolbox.

    As for general bug reporting, while there is sadly no dedicated forum area for it, there is a support webpage which can be found here: https://www.artrage.com/get-support/
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