5 ms·

Rebelle: Experimental online paint software

85 points by jawns 5y ago

a9h74j 5y ago
Amazing -- the painting and watercolor simulation aspects, not merely there being an online demo. Is Rebelle a name known to all painters at this point? One use-case: Looks to me like purchasing some of the software should be part of anyone's therapy budget (e.g. for one, they have mandala/kalaidescope painters as well, it seems). Disclosure: no connection. Just immediately impressed.
- Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
  It's not a household name, no. The competition is quite fierce, and you have to fight against the biggest juggernaut of them all: Photoshop. If your want more traditionnal techniques, you will first learn of Corel Painter then more than probably the one on iPad and at long last meet Artrage, Rebelle, Krita... I own nearly all of them, but none are very good at replicating the feeling of drawing on paper, stone, canvas. To be fair: the color model is not the same (so mixing paint is another experience), the media (tablet, with screen or not) has a plastic/glass feeling, the pen is... well, a pen, and you have to deal with the UI. In summary: it's a different experience, not good or bad, but nonetheless very different. To draw as therapy, I wouldn't bother: it's expensive, cumbersome, and won't detach you from your screen. You will still have to fight all the possibilities of the computer to not be distracted. There's a lot of coloring/drawing book for cheap on the market. My wife do that a lot and love it!
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > Looks to me like purchasing some of the software should be part of anyone's therapy budget Having a therapy budget being normalized like this is worrying to me... are you all right? like, collectively.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    > Having a therapy budget being normalized like this is worrying to me... Why does it worry you? What should people spend their money on if not on things which makes them feel better? Why do you you care what one calls this part of their discretionary spending? > are you all right? like, collectively. This might be new to you but there is nothing “collective” about individual comments. You are reacting to one specific uterance from one specific individual. If you think there is a “HN groupthink” that collectively thinks this just a model in your head. A not so usefull one.
  - efdee 5y ago
    Therapy is beneficial to many human beings and should absolutely be normalized. Don't be so macho.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    It's perfectly okay to consult a therapist, but I didn't mention psychotherapy specifically. Could include budgeting for books and experiences, massage therapy, etc. For some people random shopping or a pedicure are therapy. Other analogs: theraputic, playfulness, goofing-around, exploring new media and new sights, de-stressing. The OP sells their dynamic kalaidescope software for $30 IIRC, also iirc explicitly mentioning theraputic use. And s/should/could/ in my post. "whatever floats your boat"
- Zababa 5y ago
  What's the link between a therapy budget and painting software? Is there something like "paint therapy" that I'm not aware of?
jb1991 5y ago
strange, I tried both FF and Safari and it does not do anything for me when I try to paint.
- codeyperson 5y ago
  Same
- rlp 5y ago
  I had to turn off uBlock.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    It appears to actually be setting cookies in order to work. I turned off uBlock and it worked after refresh. Then I turned back on uBlock and refreshed, and it continued to work. Then I cleared my cookies and it stopped working again.
EvanKnowles 5y ago
Just saw this yesterday in Two Minute Papers.
woolion 5y ago
As someone working mostly in digital (Krita) and some traditional, it feels like this feels like this demo fails at replicating any of their strengths. I hope the software they sell is much better, and if that's the case I would assume this demo only makes it a disservice -- a manual slider for pressure? making a somewhat fast curve is all jagged, the HSB selector is awful and does not work properly (at least on Firefox). These points should only affect a web version (hopefully). With regards to drawing with a brush; it takes quite some time to get used to it because you can control the amount and type of paint that is loaded along your brush tip, as well as water, while also having different types of tips (hard/soft, ...). But once you somewhat get some control over it, you understand how the way you move across the paper will affect it, and either keep the tip in shape or make its hair disorderly creating more interesting texture. The point is that it flows in a continuous process, as opposed to painting software where you choose your brush settings in discrete steps.
zokier 5y ago
The color mixing used here was discussed few days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30033611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30033611
EMM_386 5y ago
Very impressive. Note: I had to disable uBlock Origin to get this to work.
elcapitan 5y ago
Some of the effects this creates look "realistic" in the sense that they resemble real watercolors. However, the painting model seems rather unrealistic, or at least how it relates to the settings. E.g. I put "water" on 100% and "pressure" on 20% and get a weird spotty dry-brush effect. That doesn't make any sense. Not even sure what "pressure" here means, as you usually would only apply pressure to a brush in order to widen its stroke width. The other thing is that colors don't interact the same way they would in reality. You can paint an underlayer and then paint over it with a very watery other color, and it just covers it up - in reality the watery color on top would a) be much less saturated and b) let the underlying color shine through or if you're unlucky c) smudge the already applied pigments below. I also noticed that the water dripping seems pretty random, something I painted a few minutes ago suddenly starts flowing down the canvas for no particular reason. The description says "with a focus on real watercolors and acrylics", but then again those are quite different painting models, it's unclear which one you are even using here.
jack_riminton 5y ago
Kind of impressive but as a painter I don't really see the point I guess if you really wanted to recreate the look of actual paint this would be useful but it would take so much effort to get a realistic look you may as well do some actual painting
jawns 5y ago
I discovered this online tool because it was mentioned on the popular YouTube channel "Two Minute Papers" by Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér, a computer graphics researcher who is very excited about the underlying technology, Mixbox, which is described in a December 2021 technical paper linked here: https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/ https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/ The relevant "Two Minute Papers" episode is: https://youtu.be/b2D_5G_npVI https://youtu.be/b2D_5G_npVI I'm not a digital artist, so I can't comment on how it compares with other available tools. But I had a lot of fun playing with the browser-based demo. It feels much more realistic than anything else I've used.
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > researcher who is very excited about the underlying technology , Mixbox I love the channel, but he is very excited about absolutely everything.
- kranner 5y ago
  I believe the new mixing algorithm is only available in the latest version of their desktop software Rebelle (version 5). This browser-based demo hasn't been updated since 2015, I think.
  - coldcode 5y ago
    I bought a copy recently and it's much improved from what it was before. The new mixing algorithm is very nice and mostly transparent. That said it's still a huge CPU hog, particularly with watercolors; it routinely soaks up 6/8 hyper threads on my iMac. Simulating real paint as a physical process seems to only happen on CPUs instead of GPUs, so a lot of these apps get really chuggy on larger canvases, whereas simple stamping engines (like in Affinity Photo) run very fast in Metal, but cannot simulate paint all that well. Not sure if you could do a physical simulation of paint in Metal/OpenGL/Vulcan etc. The new mixing algorithm works pretty well, but obviously that's only one part of simulating painting.
gushogg-blake 5y ago
Wow! The dripping/drying effect is really cool! Reminds me of a concept I wanted to try a while ago - a machine that produces watercolours, so like a "printer" that uses a camera and actual watercolour paints, brushes etc to recreate the scene as best it can. The idea was for it to be live on the scene, as opposed to looking at an image file or whatever, so it would be seeing the scene evolve like a human painter would. And there would be some element of art to how you wrote the software, making tradeoffs/guesses about how the paint will behave and how the colours will mix, plus maybe some kind of ML inspired approach to how best to identify and capture the most salient aspects of the scene and to produce something that conveys a particular style.

85 points by jawns 5y ago

Amazing -- the painting and watercolor simulation aspects, not merely there being an online demo. Is Rebelle a name known to all painters at this point? One use-case: Looks to me like purchasing some of the software should be part of anyone's therapy budget (e.g. for one, they have mandala/kalaidescope painters as well, it seems). Disclosure: no connection. Just immediately impressed.

Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
It's not a household name, no. The competition is quite fierce, and you have to fight against the biggest juggernaut of them all: Photoshop. If your want more traditionnal techniques, you will first learn of Corel Painter then more than probably the one on iPad and at long last meet Artrage, Rebelle, Krita... I own nearly all of them, but none are very good at replicating the feeling of drawing on paper, stone, canvas. To be fair: the color model is not the same (so mixing paint is another experience), the media (tablet, with screen or not) has a plastic/glass feeling, the pen is... well, a pen, and you have to deal with the UI. In summary: it's a different experience, not good or bad, but nonetheless very different. To draw as therapy, I wouldn't bother: it's expensive, cumbersome, and won't detach you from your screen. You will still have to fight all the possibilities of the computer to not be distracted. There's a lot of coloring/drawing book for cheap on the market. My wife do that a lot and love it!
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> Looks to me like purchasing some of the software should be part of anyone's therapy budget Having a therapy budget being normalized like this is worrying to me... are you all right? like, collectively.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > Having a therapy budget being normalized like this is worrying to me... Why does it worry you? What should people spend their money on if not on things which makes them feel better? Why do you you care what one calls this part of their discretionary spending? > are you all right? like, collectively. This might be new to you but there is nothing “collective” about individual comments. You are reacting to one specific uterance from one specific individual. If you think there is a “HN groupthink” that collectively thinks this just a model in your head. A not so usefull one.
- efdee 5y ago
  Therapy is beneficial to many human beings and should absolutely be normalized. Don't be so macho.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  It's perfectly okay to consult a therapist, but I didn't mention psychotherapy specifically. Could include budgeting for books and experiences, massage therapy, etc. For some people random shopping or a pedicure are therapy. Other analogs: theraputic, playfulness, goofing-around, exploring new media and new sights, de-stressing. The OP sells their dynamic kalaidescope software for $30 IIRC, also iirc explicitly mentioning theraputic use. And s/should/could/ in my post. "whatever floats your boat"
Zababa 5y ago
What's the link between a therapy budget and painting software? Is there something like "paint therapy" that I'm not aware of?

jb1991 5y ago

strange, I tried both FF and Safari and it does not do anything for me when I try to paint.

codeyperson 5y ago
Same
rlp 5y ago
I had to turn off uBlock.
- jb1991 5y ago
  It appears to actually be setting cookies in order to work. I turned off uBlock and it worked after refresh. Then I turned back on uBlock and refreshed, and it continued to work. Then I cleared my cookies and it stopped working again.

EvanKnowles 5y ago

Just saw this yesterday in Two Minute Papers.

woolion 5y ago

As someone working mostly in digital (Krita) and some traditional, it feels like this feels like this demo fails at replicating any of their strengths. I hope the software they sell is much better, and if that's the case I would assume this demo only makes it a disservice -- a manual slider for pressure? making a somewhat fast curve is all jagged, the HSB selector is awful and does not work properly (at least on Firefox). These points should only affect a web version (hopefully). With regards to drawing with a brush; it takes quite some time to get used to it because you can control the amount and type of paint that is loaded along your brush tip, as well as water, while also having different types of tips (hard/soft, ...). But once you somewhat get some control over it, you understand how the way you move across the paper will affect it, and either keep the tip in shape or make its hair disorderly creating more interesting texture. The point is that it flows in a continuous process, as opposed to painting software where you choose your brush settings in discrete steps.

zokier 5y ago

The color mixing used here was discussed few days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30033611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30033611

EMM_386 5y ago

Very impressive. Note: I had to disable uBlock Origin to get this to work.

elcapitan 5y ago

Some of the effects this creates look "realistic" in the sense that they resemble real watercolors. However, the painting model seems rather unrealistic, or at least how it relates to the settings. E.g. I put "water" on 100% and "pressure" on 20% and get a weird spotty dry-brush effect. That doesn't make any sense. Not even sure what "pressure" here means, as you usually would only apply pressure to a brush in order to widen its stroke width. The other thing is that colors don't interact the same way they would in reality. You can paint an underlayer and then paint over it with a very watery other color, and it just covers it up - in reality the watery color on top would a) be much less saturated and b) let the underlying color shine through or if you're unlucky c) smudge the already applied pigments below. I also noticed that the water dripping seems pretty random, something I painted a few minutes ago suddenly starts flowing down the canvas for no particular reason. The description says "with a focus on real watercolors and acrylics", but then again those are quite different painting models, it's unclear which one you are even using here.

jack_riminton 5y ago

Kind of impressive but as a painter I don't really see the point I guess if you really wanted to recreate the look of actual paint this would be useful but it would take so much effort to get a realistic look you may as well do some actual painting

jawns 5y ago

I discovered this online tool because it was mentioned on the popular YouTube channel "Two Minute Papers" by Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér, a computer graphics researcher who is very excited about the underlying technology, Mixbox, which is described in a December 2021 technical paper linked here: https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/ https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/ The relevant "Two Minute Papers" episode is: https://youtu.be/b2D_5G_npVI https://youtu.be/b2D_5G_npVI I'm not a digital artist, so I can't comment on how it compares with other available tools. But I had a lot of fun playing with the browser-based demo. It feels much more realistic than anything else I've used.

Hokusai 5y ago
> researcher who is very excited about the underlying technology , Mixbox I love the channel, but he is very excited about absolutely everything.
kranner 5y ago
I believe the new mixing algorithm is only available in the latest version of their desktop software Rebelle (version 5). This browser-based demo hasn't been updated since 2015, I think.
- coldcode 5y ago
  I bought a copy recently and it's much improved from what it was before. The new mixing algorithm is very nice and mostly transparent. That said it's still a huge CPU hog, particularly with watercolors; it routinely soaks up 6/8 hyper threads on my iMac. Simulating real paint as a physical process seems to only happen on CPUs instead of GPUs, so a lot of these apps get really chuggy on larger canvases, whereas simple stamping engines (like in Affinity Photo) run very fast in Metal, but cannot simulate paint all that well. Not sure if you could do a physical simulation of paint in Metal/OpenGL/Vulcan etc. The new mixing algorithm works pretty well, but obviously that's only one part of simulating painting.

gushogg-blake 5y ago

Wow! The dripping/drying effect is really cool! Reminds me of a concept I wanted to try a while ago - a machine that produces watercolours, so like a "printer" that uses a camera and actual watercolour paints, brushes etc to recreate the scene as best it can. The idea was for it to be live on the scene, as opposed to looking at an image file or whatever, so it would be seeing the scene evolve like a human painter would. And there would be some element of art to how you wrote the software, making tradeoffs/guesses about how the paint will behave and how the colours will mix, plus maybe some kind of ML inspired approach to how best to identify and capture the most salient aspects of the scene and to produce something that conveys a particular style.