multi channel layers and brushes

[kirk23]

All the image editing programs have normally 4 channels layers : RGB and alpha .    It have always been so  but in fact it's not enough for a huge amount of tasks and people who works in modern CG .  

 

 I am working as a texture artist and need at least 4 more channels ( roughness/metallnes/cavity)  and one 16 bit depth channel for each piece of image composition.      It turns Photoshop documents for example in a huge, slow, ugly uncontrollable  mess of smart objects and groups .    

 

There is only two program I aware of that use true multi channels painting and layering : 3d coat and Substance Painter  and both of them are focused mostly on painting over UV unwrapped geometry only without true floating layers which you could move, scale or recompose.  While often you need just a texture, a tileable one without any specific UV and geometry binding  where you want to quickly compose and scale things non destructively 

 

I think it's a huge lacuna  in modern image editing soft and  it would find a lot of demand would it be filled.

 

 

[00Ghz]

+ 10

[Herbert123]

Krita is making progress in this direction. It already supports seamless texture painting and multiple axes mirror painting, HDR painting, and tangent normal painting was added a while ago. Full 16bit per channel integer AND float modes, as well as 32 bit per channel float support. Templates include standard texture formats as well (up to 8k and more if needed).

 

The brush engine is fabulous.

 

Multi-channel painting and a 3d preview are on the road-map. They are really listening to texture artists.

 

If you wasn't aware of Krita already: it is open source and free, and focuses on digital painting.

https://krita.org/

 

I am unsure Affinity Photo will ever introduce more specific tools aimed at texture painters: it might be too much of a niche market.

But we will see.

[kirk23]

Agree, Krita is great. it's  amazing how open source soft can be truly innovative and  comparing it to my ever beloved now Corel Painter which is frozen in time decade ago , Krita has  a lot of promises .

 

Still I believe it moves in somehow a bit different direction I would prefer.       In fact I need a vector based non destructive bitmap composer working in multi-channels where I could compose pre-rendered pieces  including proper Z depth combining.   Something  like how Zbrush 2,5d layers work  but it would do it   non-destructively.    A kind of Zbrush companion.  

 

 

And all this without huge mess of nodes of traditional and very expensive  2d composers which are all focused on rather video composing than image one