Thoughts on CinePaint..
 

I've just downloaded and installed CinePaint, and was wondering if anyone else had any experience with it...

I know it's still only a beta, and this kind of thing may get cleared up later, but with that kind of program, you'd expect graphics tablets to be one of the main things that they'd want it to work with....

Well, pressure levels worked fine with my tablet (Wacom Intuos2), but when I tried to draw, firstly, it actually drew a significant distance to the left of where I was trying to. Also, when I moved fast, it left a trail of dots, rather than a solid line (it doesn't do this with the mouse...)

When varying pressure levels in a slow moving line, you can see the points where the pressure varies (they seem to be doing it by just placing down a circle of different opacity at certain time intervals...)

Anyway, that's my initial thoughts - I won't write it off, and I'll keep an eye on new releases, and see how they are looking.... If anyone knows of any fixes to the problems I mentioned above, I'd love to hear them.....

The consol is absolutely flooded with warnings whatever I do, the entire interface is flickering when I move the cursor over it, i cant find a shortcut to zoom in (minus key is zoom out tho), the palettes doesnt stay on-top so you have to reopen layer windows etc every time if you're zoomed up with a big view, you cant pan around freely in the workspace (you're confined to the scrollbars just like in photoshop, see painter to see what how it *should* be), the painttool only paints dots like Hugh said, the painttool get slightly off-set as you get further down in an image so the painted dot is an entire brush-width above the crosshair, I can't click normally to open menues, they just disappear, mouse and rightclic works tho.. (I'm using an wacom Intous btw)

ehm, thats after a couple of minutes of testing the app, most of them completely devastating to workflow, so I would love to hear from anyone who have used CinéPaint and/or GIMP, because to me they both suffer from all of this :rolleyes:

I do think its great what they're doing, opensource and all... but I cant help but wonder exactly what R&H used it for ;)

According to R&H, they used it for frame cleanup on Linux. The Windows version is not nearly as stable as the Linux version yet. I would suggest that you guys log your complaints in the sourceforge bug tracker for Cinepaint and join the Cinepaint mailing lists to discuss issues. Otherwise, nobody at Cinepaint headquarters will ever know what problems you're having. They are mailing-list type of folk and will likely never see this thread.

Articles on what R&H used cinepaint for are here:
http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6148
http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5683

My favorite quote from the linux movies conference when Robin mentioned that he was working on the windows port of filmgimp. This woman, I forget her name, but she was one of the original filmgimp programmers from R&H was like "Why are we wasting time porting to windows?" with this look of utter discust on her face. :) Very funny moment.

Funny indeed -- and a serious undersight on her part. I actually prefer Linux -- Gentoo for workstations, Redhat for servers -- but there are obvious reasons for porting to Windows. I won't even bother expounding. ;)

The comment was mainly made because most of the bigger studios that are using cinepaint are moving to linux from sgi some from windows. It is almost looked at as a step backwards because the current audience for this software is moving away from windows(if they were even there in the first place).

I am the IT department for a small film post house. If I had my way, we'd already be Linux-native. It doesn't really have anything to do with how small we are, but that most of our users are not computer-heads like me, and they are afraid of change. By the way, you can tell them I said that.

Where I do have a choice -- on the server side -- I choose to run some gnu/Linux distribution or FreeBSD. My main workstation here -- the one that I'm posting this message from -- is a Gentoo Linux station. My other workstation is Win2k. It runs our most precious compositing software, Digital Fusion.

Anyway, I'm going way off topic here. Sorry.

I bet you'll be happy when DF is released for Linux :)

So, why (in your opinion) is Gentoo better for a workstation than redhat? Just curious :) Softimage only recommends redhat to use for XSI at the moment.

I can't wait to see DFusion for Linux at NAB on Monday.

I can't really say that Gentoo is better than Redhat. I can't even say I'd recommend it for a production environment. If we had anything to do with Softimage/XSI, I'd probably heed their recommendation, and use Redhat. I just find that Gentoo is more fun than Redhat. One of the drawbacks is that currently Gentoo doesn't have a binary distribution system in place, so everything must be compiled from source. Some people might find this cumbersome. I don't mind it. I also like the amount of control I have over a Gentoo installation -- from start to finish I can tweak. If you pour over the installation manual for Gentoo x86 , you'll see what I mean.

Gentoo is pretty far ahead in it's package support. If you want to be able to install near-bleeding-edge software with ease, you want Gentoo.

To install Cinepaint you would do this from a shell:

su
cd /usr/portage
emerge media-video/filmgimp

Not sure why I like Gentoo so much. It's tough to put my finger on it. I guess I just like Gentoo because it affords a certain level of interaction with the system that I need in order to feel alive. :D

I choose to use Redhat for servers because it's generally secure, it has a binary package system, and I know it well.

woo, no binaries huh :spacedout I'm not *that* much of a computer-head these days :smirk:

Robin Rowe posted this today for anyone not on the cinepaint listserve(it addresses your concerns about wacom support):
I'm really excited about the new gui part. I was talking to one of the guys from Sony(Sam) that is on the dev team and he wants to make it reminisent of the Maya interface for 2d. That would totally rock if it works.

[CinePaint] Robin's Roadmap for 2003

*** CinePaint features coming later this year in 2003, in roughly
chronological order ***

1. C++ compilation in a move toward true OO code design.

2. Full Wacom tablet support, currently broken/incomplete.

3. A new layers metaphor with grouping and sub-layers, to do away with
annoying barriers encountered working with channels.

4. Video editing.

5. A new GUI intended to significantly reduce operator fatigue and
frustration.

6. CMYK support.

7. A macro recorder.

8. Support for really large images, currently broken.

9. 32-bit color support (and the capacity to handle even higher bit-depths).

10. Native Mac Aqua support by porting GTK+ to that platform.

woho! Maybe there's hope after all :D

new gui
 

Cinepaint has some cool ideas for the gui and frame manager. But, yeah, it's quite frustrating to use at the moment. I'm hoping to see that improve soon, so I can actually use it in production.

interesting application, and it has a great potential.
but, it ignores the very basics of a proffesional use - shortcuts.

1. this starts with the modules structure wich makes the alt+tab, ctrl+tab completly useless (I do windows, for now..)
2. same mistake as adobe made - ctrl+alt+key shortcuts. as you already know, these are desktop shortcuts in XP, and using these can grant you an impresive work speed. it's quite frustrating to press a ctrl+alt combo in PS or cinepaint and open up the web browser, the calculator or character map.
3. lack of shortcuts.
4. gui. (wth is with those silly check boxes?)

I sincerely don't really like the floating mode for an app.. I hate to see the mess on my desktop while working (maybe this is why I love tremor gui in shake) but cinepaint is definately a promising application and I hope we'll have some visible improvements in the future.

regards,
C.

ps. I understand it is a freeware, but "Do, or do not. There is no try." :google:

edit: I'm late with 3 years XD

The whole program has been rewritten from scratch over the last year (code name Glasgow). If you know how to compile apps yourself, you can try it out in CVS. It is still very alpha though.

http://cinepaint.org/