We had a really productive sprint in Deventer last weekend -- report is following! One of the things we discussed was the next kickstarter. It's going to have two main topics:

• Text Tool: optimize for typography and short paragraphs (like balloons)
• Vector Tool: port from ODG to SVG, improve interaction and performance

And a bunch of stretch goals, of course! We went through all the wishes on bugzilla (316) and Irina is going through all the interviews to figure out what the most popular requests are, but let's have a discussion here as well. Also on what people really want from the text tool and the vector tool!

Here are the minutes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TWhg7xIx4H1aDwvoN9cE6ucRk-pCKVaA3W5Z1tCKC-I/edit#

And here is a little preliminary text tool plan (please disregard the Dutch section titles): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qZ- ... 0qK5I/edit

So -- what do you want to see in the new text tool, vector support, stretch goals?

And since we grew so big last year that the printer still hasn't managed to create all the physical rewards, what non-physical reward ideas do you have?

Scripting! There would be tons of ways Krita could be customized. There would be no end to the possibilities this gives!

- Why would the prime userbase be studios as stated in the sprint meeting notes!? Have a look at Blender or Gimp scripts. There are lots and lots of useful tools for average users.

animationista wrote:Scripting! There would be tons of ways Krita could be customized. There would be no end to the possibilities this gives!

If scripting would include integrated batch processing of multiple documents, e.g. image resize, sharpen etc., then I could ditch oldie Photofiltre and use a Krita workflow exclusively.

For Vector tools, I am going to go in the direction of adding better features for line work. People always seem to want nice crisp lines. The current pen tool works, but doesn't have much power and flexibility compared to other applications. One application that does a great job is Retas. Retas is an animation tool, but does a great job at making linework easier. The result can either be output to raster or vector which is nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZQNOrur-u8

0:30 - stabilization and line thinning settings
1:09 - join lines
1:36 - reshape lines
1:46 - change line width

Those are a few things that are neat, but there is a lot of really great features that this application has. Maybe there is a page we can take out of the Retas workflow for vector tools.

SVG support is great ! Scripting also.

Something like ‘shy layers’ (would be useful when working on big compositions with hundreds of layers. The best would be that the shy layers store a copy of the layer but flatten to gain some speed (especially with transform or filter masks).

The ability to export compositions as pdf pages...

Related to the text tool for comics, I have no experience with the state of art, but the funding plan seems solid and already taught me a thing or two.

Related to the vector tool, one of the things that came to mind when reading 'improve interaction and performance' is the now expired (read: free to use) set of Ashlar patents describing a Drafting Assistant (which was acquired by Autodesk eventually).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaMDQTynZdg

This looks very interesting, especially the focus on comics.

Admittedly, I haven't really been keeping track of the Krita development lately, but I've seen that the animation feature is coming along nicely. With the focus on comics, I was thinking that the animation support could possibly double as a multi-page comic book feature. Animation and comic book support share a lot of the same functions, you just treat each page as a frame of animation. It just needs a slightly different front end showing bigger thumbnails and page spreads, similar to the page manager in Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint or in my Gimp Book plug-in. The back end could presumably be exactly the same (I'm guessing).

As a side note, here are three tutorials I did on how I go about making comics in Gimp, that could possibly be useful for reference. I use the path/vector tool for drawing both panels and speech bubbles.

Making Comics with GIMP - Page Setup
Making Comics with GIMP - Panels and Gutters
Making Comics with GIMP - Speech Bubbles

At risk of at least partly over-stretching this year's vector tool stretch goals: 2D vector animation and tweening (morphing, cutout, kinematics).
Reference: http://wiki.synfig.org/Doc:Overview

The only feature I would back on kickstarter is an improved vector layer.
But let me elaborate on this because currently it is not enough to use a standard vector technology in order to have a good lineart workflow!

Having calligraphy pen with pressure sensitivity to ink on vector layers would help. Using standard vector approach however will end up with lineart data that is destructive and not easy to manipulate. Because using the calligraphy tool in inkscape essentially creates shapes in the form of lines. Then those lines can not be manipulated easily. That means that if you ink something with one line width , then you need to reuse the same drawing again - but bigger- scaling it would also scale the line thickness.

Moreover, inking is an artistic organic process. A cleanup is needed that revolves around erasing lines that overshoot their target, smoothing lines that are not good enough, massaging line thickness and controlling it globally. Sculpting lines after they are created.

Some of this is possible in inkscape, but it is less than ideal compared to other technology - some of which already exists in open source form.

First lets look at the professional animation software out there that uses vectors. Toonboom Harmony creates lines with varied thickness that can be controlled - as it is stored in the line nodes. You have the option to flatten lines - even automatically as you draw them. What does that mean? Well, as you draw a line and it crosses another line, both of the lines upon colision get merged and a node is created where they have intersected. That makes it easy to erase the overshooting part of those lines with a single click. It also makes them more manageable for further edits. Hair is a classic example of this.
The absolute same approach is taken in Celsys Clip Paint Studio - a competing software with a really cheap license - created by the people who made RETAS - that is soon going to release the english version with animation features! Their lineart toolset is the single biggest selling point!
http://www.clipstudio.net/en

apart of the awesome line correction tools, note the vector eraser tool:

It can automatically erase a line up to the node where it has intersected another line. This not only makes it very easy to clean up line work, but much more precise. The same tool is available in toonboom harmony. It's an industry standard.

I urge you to look at their website and check all of the lineart tools they have to offer.Their resolution independent (vector) lineart layer type that stores line thickness in nodes, instead of creating blobs like inkscape.

Having a vector layer with good lineart tools would give Krita an incredibly big edge to TVPAINT - where reusing lineart is problematic in animation - because when you transform reused bitmap linework- it loses it's quality. Especially rotating pixelels is problematic. In classic animation you have to reuse drawings, very often parts of drawings. You have to rotate them, translate them - when doing it on bitmap layer - the antialiasing recalculations ruin the quality. That is why it is best to do linework on a lineart layer.

Moreover now with other open source software - animation software - already having similar technology, it would make it easier for devs to study their approach.
Please look into http://www.vpaint.org/
https://github.com/dalboris/vpaint
It has the closest to what is in clip paint studio, what is in toonboom harmony. Do not just improve a generic vector layer with lacking line tools.
There is better technology out there that has all the advantages of vector layers, but none of the disadvantages. This is especially important as a complimentary feature to the animation. Call it a new layer type. call it lineart layer or something.
See this video about why vec approach is better than just vectors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdQFAMe7TlY

look into pencil2d even if it's code is very unmaintained/broken - at it's core the vector layer there behaves very differently than inkscape. Line nodes contain information about thickness, they flatten at intersecting points.



Anyway, as an animator - seeing this in krita's roadmap for kickstarter would make me put my money on the table.
I am pretty sure that it would benefit comic book artists and generally illustrators much more than an improved text tool. They are both important of course, but the text tool alone is not going to convince me to support the campaign. And just making a calligraphy tool like inkscape's is not enough either. Make an awesome (new vector) lineart layer where line thickness is stored in nodes, where we have an awesome brush with stabilizer that can flatten lines and an awesome vector eraser that cleans overshooting lines like toonboom and clip paint studio. Then you will blow my mind and have me on a platter!

We'd first need to have vector animation or at the least the ability to animate vector layers frame-by-frame to get half of what you're suggesting working.

The current vector layer can already hold variable width lines(the calligraphy tool), hence why this is already mentioned as a good target for improvement.

Whatever you do, please make the interface like this:


There's a lot of things going on in this interface proposal, but I think it is self-evident? This approach emulates the success of Krita's brush engine, i.e. access to many engines and features while retaining easy access via presets. Also:
- When you choose a vector tool, right-clicking shows vector presets.
- When you choose a text tool, right-clicking shows text presets.

Which makes life much easier for comic artists, who'd rather have easy access to "default text font/bubble" and "SFX style X" rather than having to scroll through a hundred fonts every single time they switch something. The 'text box' feature is an automated text bubble generator like the type you find in office programs, with an option to create your custom shapes.

As shown by the list to the left, this approach allows you to add all sorts of fun engines, like the Thick stroke feature everybody probably wants (variable line width, with pressure sensitivity + edge thinning options), like Patterns on Path where you can take existing or copied objects and have it stretched or multiplied along a path (to create repeated patterns like zippers, ladders and whatnot), and text bubbles as mentioned.

If something isn't clear, ask me and I'll work out the interface/examples.

While we're at it, although I have no idea what sorts of tools are used for animation, if there are some then you can present engines for animation tools in the same way.

Ok, here are the most desired features for the vector layers:

0. Undo doesnt seem to work on vector layers/calligraphy tool. Undo would be nice to have
1. Support for frame by frame animation - no tweening needed yet
2. A new tool/brush to sculpt calligraphy line's thickness, shape and also to simplify/smoothen lines by reducing the number of their nodes (see clip paint studio and vpaint )
3. Vector eraser tool (see clip paint studio) - it optionally erases lines up to where they cross with other lines. For this to work you need the ability to flatten/merge lines I think
4. Cut tool - capable of spliting lines with a stroke, lasso selection for easier copy/pasting
5. Multi node selection and ability to erase nodes.
6. Ability to easily simplify multiple selected lines, change global line thickness with a slider
7.Grouping and ungrouping of multiple selected lines - for easier management/rotation, adjustement of pivot point of selection, remembering pivot points of line groups

Hi,
I tried to improve Krita to support complex text layout such as Arabic. Krita uses QPainterPath to draw text in the path by using addText method . Moreover, Add text method draws character by character on the path , so it bugs complex text layout such Arabic language . I have used QTextLayout to use QGlyphRun . In addition, QGlyphRun returns glyphIndexes and glyph positions. There is a function in QRawFont ( pathForGlyph( ) ) which can add glyph in a path.
Before


After the problem solved.


This is ctl patch for krita,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxH8cy ... sp=sharing

You may want to look on Raqm API , it currently provides bidirectional text support (using FriBiDi), shaping (using HarfBuzz), with proper script itemization and font feature . By the virtue of this, Raqm can support most writing systems covered by Unicode.

https://github.com/HOST-Oman/libraqm

Woah, thanks Boudewjin for the info !

I'm glad to know that you will target Vectors for this new Kickstarter, this should make Krita an even more solid and versatile software.
I wish you would consider SVG animation though, now that Krita has a nice Timeline, I think it could be done (relatively) easily.

TheraHedwig wrote:We'd first need to have vector animation or at the least the ability to animate vector layers frame-by-frame to get half of what you're suggesting working.

The current vector layer can already hold variable width lines(the calligraphy tool), hence why this is already mentioned as a good target for improvement.

I'd love to see vector animation ! You already made me very tempted to give money when the Kickstarter begins, I might give even more !

Oh, by the way, is the Kickstarter still planned to begin in May ?