5 ms·

It's limited vector painting tools are what keep me in Clip Studio. It's the first thing I look for with each Krita release.

danShumway 3y ago
I suspect it's probably going to be a while unfortunately. I'm all-in on Open Source, there's no way I'm moving back to CSP, but the lack of vector drawing in Krita has driven me to learn more about Blender grease pencil. It's got both some really amazing features and some frustrating limitations as well. Truthfully, CSP is also not quite everything I would want out of vector tools, it's just closer. What I've been interested in for a while and haven't been able to replicate is drawing in multiple passes: draw a stroke's position, then its thickness, then its strength, then its velocity, all as separate steps. CSP sort of has this; you can redraw vector strokes (or at least could last time I used it), and it was great. But I feel like it could be taken further and I feel like it's an area where there could be a lot of innovation beyond what CSP even allows. But I don't think there's consensus yet from the Krita team about what direction they would want to go, and to be fair, I'm not sure I would be able to answer that question either. I'm not sure just copying CSP would be the right move, I do want to see more actual experimentation in that space beyond just vector layers -- like ideally I'd like to be able to do multiple-pass strokes in paint layers too? But it is a really big weakness of the app right now, I agree.
- parlortricks 3y ago
  For vector art have you looked at Inkscape?
  - danShumway 3y ago
    I have, I couldn't get into it. Might have been a learning curve issue; Grease pencil also had a giant learning curve and I've only recently started to feel more comfortable with it. But I just found Inkscape really awkward and clunky to use for any kind of illustration or free-drawing. I think Blender in some ways might have an advantage there because there are enough obvious cool features with Grease pencil (3D integration, rendering pipelines) that it provides more motivation to get past the "how the heck am I supposed to draw comfortably in this" hurdle. And it needs those motivators, Grease pencil is not comfortable to draw in without changing some settings and learning more about the general Blender interface; it's got a huge barrier to entry. It's possible I could get Inkscape configured and comfortable to use, but I just didn't have enough reason to get over the hurdle. Or maybe it is actually too clunky to use more like a painting app; but I want to give it the benefit of the doubt since I'm less familiar with it.
    - mkl 3y ago
      Inkscape is good for many things, but not for painting.
      - neonnoodle 3y ago
        I recently started doing more vector work as preliminary layouts/color flatting for digital painting in other apps and Inkscape has come a long way.
    - neonnoodle 3y ago
      The energy you can muster to go back and learn more Blender will pay off in the long term imo. Blender is like the Swiss Army knife program of my dreams.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Not an artist, but what's limiting about the vector painting? Is it something that could be fixed by a plug-in?
- chsh2 3y ago
  In my experience, unlike an SVG path that has a single line thickness and opacity value, a vector stroke in Clip Studio Paint has thickness and opacity data per point. In addition, these points can have image textures, just like the raster brushes. These features make the vector path better depict a hand-drawn stroke. A Clip Studio user can easily switch between vector and raster mode with the same brush, but Krita cannot achieve this. The Blender Grease Pencil also represents vector data in this way (per-point attributes). I find it promising and try to develop add-ons for it. But I am not familiar with Krita plug-in development and do not know how much its vector painting can be improved.

danShumway 3y ago

I suspect it's probably going to be a while unfortunately. I'm all-in on Open Source, there's no way I'm moving back to CSP, but the lack of vector drawing in Krita has driven me to learn more about Blender grease pencil. It's got both some really amazing features and some frustrating limitations as well. Truthfully, CSP is also not quite everything I would want out of vector tools, it's just closer. What I've been interested in for a while and haven't been able to replicate is drawing in multiple passes: draw a stroke's position, then its thickness, then its strength, then its velocity, all as separate steps. CSP sort of has this; you can redraw vector strokes (or at least could last time I used it), and it was great. But I feel like it could be taken further and I feel like it's an area where there could be a lot of innovation beyond what CSP even allows. But I don't think there's consensus yet from the Krita team about what direction they would want to go, and to be fair, I'm not sure I would be able to answer that question either. I'm not sure just copying CSP would be the right move, I do want to see more actual experimentation in that space beyond just vector layers -- like ideally I'd like to be able to do multiple-pass strokes in paint layers too? But it is a really big weakness of the app right now, I agree.

parlortricks 3y ago
For vector art have you looked at Inkscape?
- danShumway 3y ago
  I have, I couldn't get into it. Might have been a learning curve issue; Grease pencil also had a giant learning curve and I've only recently started to feel more comfortable with it. But I just found Inkscape really awkward and clunky to use for any kind of illustration or free-drawing. I think Blender in some ways might have an advantage there because there are enough obvious cool features with Grease pencil (3D integration, rendering pipelines) that it provides more motivation to get past the "how the heck am I supposed to draw comfortably in this" hurdle. And it needs those motivators, Grease pencil is not comfortable to draw in without changing some settings and learning more about the general Blender interface; it's got a huge barrier to entry. It's possible I could get Inkscape configured and comfortable to use, but I just didn't have enough reason to get over the hurdle. Or maybe it is actually too clunky to use more like a painting app; but I want to give it the benefit of the doubt since I'm less familiar with it.
  - mkl 3y ago
    Inkscape is good for many things, but not for painting.
    - neonnoodle 3y ago
      I recently started doing more vector work as preliminary layouts/color flatting for digital painting in other apps and Inkscape has come a long way.
  - neonnoodle 3y ago
    The energy you can muster to go back and learn more Blender will pay off in the long term imo. Blender is like the Swiss Army knife program of my dreams.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

Not an artist, but what's limiting about the vector painting? Is it something that could be fixed by a plug-in?

chsh2 3y ago
In my experience, unlike an SVG path that has a single line thickness and opacity value, a vector stroke in Clip Studio Paint has thickness and opacity data per point. In addition, these points can have image textures, just like the raster brushes. These features make the vector path better depict a hand-drawn stroke. A Clip Studio user can easily switch between vector and raster mode with the same brush, but Krita cannot achieve this. The Blender Grease Pencil also represents vector data in this way (per-point attributes). I find it promising and try to develop add-ons for it. But I am not familiar with Krita plug-in development and do not know how much its vector painting can be improved.