Script Tips - Tools Not to Use

This is a lengthy post, sorry if that's annoying.

I’ve been working a lot with scripts, and learning about this touchy feature of Painter IX. I hope what I’ve learned will be helpful to somebody else. As I learn things, I’ll post them on these forums. My experiences are based on Painter for the Mac; PC users may have different results.

Scripts are wonderful, but depending on your purposes, they can crash Painter IX. They are especially crash-prone when it comes to turning one of your scripts into an animation. Most of the tools work great normally, but if you’re planning on turning a script into a little mini-movie, you’d better be sure to use the right tools, or you won’t be able to use the script at all.

I haven’t tried making movies of scripts using all the tools available, but the general thrust of these tip is to test out any tool’s compatibility with script-movie making before you commit to a large project.

Of the brushes I’ve worked with, the Watercolor brushes are to be avoided at all costs. They aren’t functional for movies at all, they crash Painter IX every time.

Artist’s Oils should also be used with care. Any Artist’s Oils brush that uses impasto will likewise crash Painter. There’s a work-around if you want to mess with the script to disable the impasto effect on a specific brush, but it’s a bit of trouble figuring out how to do it. I can go into it if anyone’s interested.

In general, avoid using selections and marquees to do things during recording of scripts intended for movie-making. In my experience, these tend to cause errors that stop scripts from completing. Again, editing the file can fix some of these issues, but it’s tricky.

Layers too can cause a lot of trouble. What can happen on replay, when making animations, is that anything painted on a higher layer won’t line up correctly with lower layers. I’ve found a tedious work-around for this as well, but it’s not 100% reliable, so I won’t go into it. In general, just don’t do it.

Especially avoid using IX.5’s new “erase anything” tools. In the scripts I’ve used them in, not only do they not work correctly when being played back for an animation, they actually do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do: they draw thick black areas everywhere they’re supposed to erase. To repeat myself yet again, there are tricky and tedious work-arounds if you’re intrepid enough to get into script editing.

Finally, as limiting as it may seem, avoid using more than one brush while recording any script intended to be played back as a movie. While Painter records the initial state of the brush that is active at the time the script starts, in some cases it will not record the state of any brush that is selected afterwards, instead using the default state of that brush. For example, say there’s a Pastel brush that is a default size 10, but the last time I used it I changed the size to 23. If I’m using an Artist’s Oils brush when I start recording, and then switch to the Pastel brush, the Pastel will still be size 23, the size I left it at, and all my painting will be done with it at that size. However, on playback, when the Pastel brush becomes active it will be at size 10, its default size, and none of the strokes will come out the way they’re intended. I’ve been using a work-around for this, which again is a little complicated and possibly not 100% reliable.

Well, there you have it. Those are some of my experiences. It may seem limiting, but even with all those things to avoid, once I knew how to dodge the pitfalls, I’ve found the creation of movies from my art to be a lot of fun. I hope with these tips others will be able to avoid the frustration and get right to the fun!

Hi Jesse,

It would be very helpful if you could send a detailed report of each of these problems directly to the Corel Painter development team at:

painterteam@corel.com

Include your complete system specs, platform, Painter version (including Update/patch number, if any), and all steps leading up to the problem. Also include a description of the image (i.e number of Layers, names of Layer types), and brush categories and brush variants (exact names).

Also include any other details you think might be helpful to the developers so they can reproduce the problem, track down the cause, and fix it.

If possible, be prepared to send the offending file and when possible and when appropriate, send screen prints to the Painter team.

In general, if your Painter version supports crash reports, always complete the form and send the report to Corel.


Good luck!

Jinny,

I forwarded my post to the e-mail address you supplied. I don't think I want to do any more than that. If I get a reply that asks for more specific detail, I'll answer it, but I used to work in QA for software, and I'm not inclined to do it for free.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, or to be callous. I'm sure you were thinking of the greater good of all Painter IX users, which is a good thing. And mainly I'm trying to help other users, like me, who have to figure out how to use the software as is.

But yeah, I did forward them the post, which was a good idea I thank you for.