Post custom brushes here!

#1

I just realized we really should have a sticky thread where people posted links to various custom Painter brushes availble for download on the internet. So, if you have some, or know URL’s for some, post them here. [b]Try to only post brushes you have actually used and think are really good–not just any link you come across.

[/b]I'll kick off the thread with the latest version of my custom brushes (updated just today).

[http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/goodies/goodies.htm](http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/goodies/goodies.htm) (this link includes install instructions, download for the brushes..etc)


I wasn’t happy with any of the pencil brushes that came with Painter, so I tried to design a brush that could come as close to a real pencil as possible. Although this is pretty good, I’m still trying to get that “shade with flat side of pencil” feature into it, so that tilting the tablet pen will be like tilting a real pencil.


The Round Series of brushes (Painting Round and Blender Round series) are my workhorse brushes, as I do majority of my work with them. The Painting Round series gives me a lush bristled look, with great control in bleed and opacity, which allows very refined brushwork. The Blender Round series are basically the Painting Round series with the resaturation turned off, so I could have a set of various sized blending brushes easily accesible (I hate tweaking brushes on the fly, as I sometimes get distracted and end up playing with the brush controls instead of painting).


[left]I wanted a basic set of brushes that handled to my liking for simple blocking in of early stages, so I designed these three.
[/left]
[left]Rob’s Basic Flat - Just flat color with no bleed or opacity sensitivity. You can control the size with pressure, that’s it. Great for laying down flat areas of color, and having size sensitivity means you don’t have to change brush sizes as often.
[/left]
[left]Rob’s Basic - No size and opacity sensitivity, but have bleed and control sensitivity. Great for laying down rough values and color variations with blending in your brushstrokes.
[/left]
[left]Rob’s Basic (No Bleed) - bleed and resaturation turned off, but Pressure sensitivity turned on. This essentially gives you a brush that’s similar to Photoshop’s brushes. The lack of blending gives you very pure colors to work with.
[/left]


This is a captured bristle brush, and it’s like the Round Series, except that I’ve made it to be even more lush/creamy in feel. As you can see, at smaller sizes, the limitation of a captured bristle shows. This brush is at best when set to at least size 10 or more. I have it on 15 as the default.

#2

Rob,

I didn’t download today’s offering since I just went through all that yesterday so I don’t know if you’ve done this already:

It would be very helpful if, when you include a brush variant from the default brush variants provided in Painter, and make just a few tweaks to make your own custom brush variant, the brush variant name would reflect that it’s yours, not one of the installed brush variants.

For instance:

Rob’s Palette Knife instead of Palette Knife.

Thanks,

#3

I don’t add “Rob’s” to a variant if I feel the tweaks I’ve made are relatively minor. In fact, I’ll just take out any brushes that don’t have “Rob’s” in the name from the available download. Should I add “Rob’s” to the sets of Opaque Round and Blender Round brushes?

#4

Rob,

The point is that if one of the brush variants you’ve tweaked and added to your brush download has the original, default Painter brush variant name, for all the person who downloads your brush variants knows, it’s a redundant brush variant, the same as what they already have.

It’s confusing to say the least and can cause problems if the artist decides to reorganize their brush variants in any way. There’s the potential of a default brush variant being overwritten by one of your tweaked variants.

Minor tweaks or not, if you’ve changed the brush variant, then saved it, it’s a custom brush variant and should not have the same name as one of Painter’s default variants.

If you haven’t changed the brush variant in any way, it’s a default Painter brush variant and should not be included in your download.

As to your question:

Should I add “Rob’s” to the sets of Opaque Round and Blender Round brushes?

It doesn’t matter what you name your custom brush variants, as long as your custom brush variants have unique names not already used by any Painter version since older version brushes are included on the Painter CD’s.

I just used “Rob’s” as a quick example of how to make it clear the brush variant is yours, a custom brush variant.

Managing brushes is confusing enough without this kind of thing, that’s so easy to avoid, adding to the confusion.

By the way, it’s not recommended that people add downloaded brushes to the default Painter Brushes library. The same goes for Papers, Patterns, Gradients, etc. It’s too easy to bloat brush and art materials libraries and that can cause Painter to slow down. It’s better if the person sharing their brushes or art materials organizes them in a custom brush library folder so that brush library can be loaded independently whenever needed. That would also help to avoid mixing up brush variants with the same, or similar names because yours, for instance, would all be together in a brush library named, for instance, Rob’s PIX Brushes or whatever unique name you want to give it.

Do what you want, but I’m going to back off on straightening out these problems (if I can remember to, that is). It’s way too time consuming and frankly not my job to take care of someone elses’s brushes for them. Year after year, I’ve spent hours and hours over Ryan Church’s, Don Seegmiller’s, yours, and any number of other Painter user’s brush downloads trying to help people figure out how to get them installed and loaded.

If a Painter artist can create nice custom brush variants for others to use, surely they can figure out what’s need to make them ready to use and easy to install and load.

Thanks in advance,

#5

I see you point. I’ll make some name changes so there won’t be any danger of overwiting if anyone starts moving brushes between the categories.

I’m under the impression that making downloads as its own brush library will only confuse people even more, because then they’d have to deal with loading different libraries, figuring out how to have quick access to another library while painting, and most likely, they’d want all the categories they use in the same library anyway. But I’ll go ahead and do it because like you said, you’re the one dealing with a lot of these questions, and the least I can do is to make life easier for everyone. :slight_smile:

As far as artists not making things easy for people who want to use their brushes–I guess that’s just the way things are in the modern internet culture. It’s not often you find detailed instructions for free downloads. It’s the same thing in the world of music or other softwares based stuff. There are tons of free music VST plugins for download on the internet, or presets for VST’s, but you’d be lucky to find instructions on how to use those VST’s or presets–people just assume you should know if you know enough to go hunting for these freebies–and there’s always the “I expect you to have read the help file/manual” mentality as well. I think there’s also the mentality of “I’ve already taken time out to make and gave you cool free stuff, I shouldn’t have to hold your hand after that.” as well.

I guess in a perfect world, everyone would be curteous, helpful, caring, responsible, nurturing…etc–but this world is far from being perfect, and that’s also why you are such a treasured member of the Painter community–because you uphold those qualities daily in your dealings with the Painter community. We could all be doing better following you as an example.

#6

Thanks!

I’m under the impression that making downloads as its own brush library will only confuse people even more, because then they’d have to deal with loading different libraries, figuring out how to have quick access to another library while painting,

On the contrary. It’s the easiest way for people to organize and load custom brushes. It’s the same as when they use brush libraries from the Painter IX CD > Extras folder. All they have to do is move the entire brush library into the following folder:

Corel > Corel Painter IX > Brushes

As to having quick access to different libraries, that’s almost a no brainer. Just use Custom Palettes and with a single click the other brush library is loaded and ready to use.

As to “figuring out”… any new Painter user and even a long time Painter user should have enough sense to read the User Guide or Help > Help Topics to learn how to use Painter. That’s why, instead of answering a question, I often refer the person to the appropriate chapter, page, and section heading in Help > Help Topics.

We’re not here, after all, to do things for Painter users they can do for themselves, though we often do just out of generosity and empathy for the brand new user who doesn’t even know Painter terminology enough to look things up in the User Guide or Help > Help Topics.

and most likely, they’d want all the categories they use in the same library anyway.

If that’s the case, by then they should have learned how to organize their brushes and it should not be a problem. If they haven’t learned how, it won’t be your fault or mine and they’ll just have to read the User Guide or Help > Help Topics… then… ask for help if they really get stuck after doing the leg work on their own.

But I’ll go ahead and do it because like you said, you’re the one dealing with a lot of these questions, and the least I can do is to make life easier for everyone.

It’ll be easier on you, Rob, since you’re responsible for your own custom brushes and for answering questions about them.

As far as artists not making things easy for people who want to use their brushes–I guess that’s just the way things are in the modern internet culture. It’s not often you find detailed instructions for free downloads.

Saying “that’s just they way things are…” is not an excuse for participating in making things less than clear and easy to use when offering to share. It reminds me of what my mother said to me when I was a kid and had said to her, “But everyone’s doing it!”. Her response was “I don’t care if ‘everyone’s doing it’. It’s not right and you’re not going to do it!”.

It’s the same thing in the world of music or other softwares based stuff. There are tons of free music VST plugins for download on the internet, or presets for VST’s, but you’d be lucky to find instructions on how to use those VST’s or presets–people just assume you should know if you know enough to go hunting for these freebies–and there’s always the “I expect you to have read the help file/manual” mentality as well. I think there’s also the mentality of “I’ve already taken time out to make and gave you cool free stuff, I shouldn’t have to hold your hand after that.” as well.

That mentality is less than generous, especially when it applies to Painter’s brushes. As you and I both know, they’re confusing enough to manage and if one is going to share, they should not add more confusion to the “gift”.

I guess in a perfect world, everyone would be curteous, helpful, caring, responsible, nurturing…etc–but this world is far from being perfect, and that’s also why you are such a treasured member of the Painter community–because you uphold those qualities daily in your dealings with the Painter community. We could all be doing better following you as an example.

Thank you, Rob. I hope you all do better, if you’re not already. There are many others besides me who are thoughtful, generous, and do their best to provide whatever information is needed in a clear and easy to understand manner.

You and anyone sharing Painter resources and information will feel better about yourselves and any gifts you share with the Painter community if you do that as well.

That will make the world just that much better, too, and surely this old world needs to be better!

#7

One, stupid question, in photoshop CS, how do you set the brush so it goes from a big size to a small size in the same stroke, also how do you make it fade. I was able to do this in precious versions of photoshop but I can´t seem to find it in the CS version. Thanks.

#8

oh, I hit a link to this thread form another trhead and until I realize it says COREL painter and I´m asking foe photoshop, sorry!

#9

=/ i just downloaded thous brushes and did as it was sayd in the instructions, but when i try to “load” the library painter gives me error masage “No variants exist in the category”. Do anyone knows why this happens to me? and how shuld i fix that? thanks in advance.

#10

Hi,

I think you must have misunderstood the instructions because that happens only when brush folders and/or files are not placed in the right location.

Delete what you have, download the ZIP file again, read the instructions carefully, and follow them exactly. Then you’ll be able to load the Rob’s Brush Library.

I just did it so I know it works when we follow the instructions just below the download link and four small demonstration images on Lunatique’s site, here:

http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/goodies/goodies.htm

#11

It’s the same as when they use brush libraries from the Painter IX CD > Extras folder. All they have to do is move the entire brush library into the following folder:

Corel > Corel Painter IX > Brushes

Hi there,

I have a question as to this instruction (I did not download Luna’s brushes yet, I just wonder, in general and to make things clear for me):

The path you refer to here is the local user painter folder, isnt it (as opposed to the main app’s home directory)?

Because I thought the application’s home folder was read-only.
Like, any tweaks I do will be saved to my user folder and when I, e.g., hit the “reset to standard” button painter reads from the app folder?

So, if I got that right, extra ressources and downloaded brushes go to the local user folder and not to the main apps home folder?

Will it do any serious harm to Painter if you install new brushes or brush categories in the main apps path, actually?

#12

Hi,

I put the Rob’s Brushes library in the following folder:

C:/Program Files/Corel/Corel Painter IX/Brushes

This is the (Windows) path to the Painter IX application/program Brushes folder where all brush libraries must be located for Painter IX to find and load them. For Mac users, the location would be the same but the path would read slightly differently, Applications instead of Program Files, for instance.

Yes, the Painter IX application/program folder is read only.

Painter IX automatically reads brush libraries we add to the folder above, creates brush category folders, and writes user changes made to those brush libraries to the Painter IX User folder, in the appropriate brush library’s brush category folders.

These changes written to the Painter IX User folder are, for instance:

[ul]
[li]The currently selected brush variant (Category Data.xml).[/li][li]For each default brush variant, cached variants (files for which the brush variant name matches the associated default brush variant and is preceded by c_) used to store temporary brush control adjustments made to a brush variant by the user.[/li][li]Saved custom brush variants.[/li][li]NIB (brush nib) and STK (stroke) files are also written to the appropriate brush category folder for each brush variant and bear the same name as their associated default brush variant file.[/li][li]… among other changes I may not be thinking of at the moment.[/li][/ul]
Because the basic brush library is in the Painter IX application/program folder and user changes are only written to the Painter IX User folder, it’s important to make a backup copy of the Painter IX User folder before doing either of the following:

[ul]
[li]Holding down the Shift key while launching Painter IX to restore the program to its installed state.[/li][li]Uninstalling Painter IX and reinstalling Painter IX.[/li][li]Installing a patch/Update (on the chance that contents of the User folder may be removed in the process… I’m not sure that would be the case but different patches/Updates have required different procedures over the years, so it’s best to be safe rather than sorry).[/li][/ul]

#13

Thanks for your answer!

I see!

You mentioned backups…
So, if I for any reason (updates or anything) would want to reinstall my tweaks and imported brushes I would have to

  • paste my backuped user files back in the local user folder

and

  • put imported brushes back in the apps main folder?

Sorry, if I sound stupid (can’t help it - there must be a reason for this I can’t figure out at the moment:D), but I just want to understand what happens.

EDIT: Maybe the reason why I ask this is a bit unclear, so I decided to add this:
when reinstalling painter (for any reason whatsoever) do I not run the risk that painter overwrites my backup with the standard variants (and the original untweaked versions of any downloaded brushes), because it does this compilation of all the brushes which it then writes into the local user folder on its first start?

Actually, though I am quite an experienced user I feel confused by all this read/write folder to and fro and think there should be an import/export brushes and categories function which provides importing and exporting those ressources with the push of a button.

#14

Here is my little set of brushes (only four). Nothing fancy, and one of them actually based on Lunatique’s pencil variant.

Brushes

By the way, Lunatique, your bristles are my favorite set. :thumbsup:

#15

I have been working on a texture brush library for Painter to supplement some of the default brushes which give textured effects in conjunction with paper grain etc.

The LE version which is now available, has ben developed to work in Painter 7 through IX. The library comprises of five brush categories, which are described as follows, along with a few brief instructions for use.

1. Cover Grain

These variants are set to behave like texture airbrushes, which derive texture from the currently selected paper grain. Both the current foreground and background colors (selected in the Colors palette) will correspond with the light and dark areas of the paper texture selected (adjust paper contrast to suite).

The ‘GS’ variants in this category are preset for WYSIWYG application (when full opacity is reached) in conjunction with the Paper Preview Window in the Papers palette. However, to achieve this, the foreground color had to be preset to white, and the background black, so remember to adjust the foreground color if you subsequently use a non GS variant afterwards (unless you actually want to paint with white).

There are also two Toothbrush (splatter) variants which also interact with the current paper grain.

Note that with the variants in this category, any underlying imagery will be completely covered at full opacity.

2/3. Sampling 1 and Sampling Impasto.

Although I believe the ‘raw material’ to build these brushes has been there since at least Painter 6, the concept of sampling color and imagery already present on the canvas or layer, then creating unique textures with it, will be something very new to most of you. The technique of using the Sampling variants is described below;

First, open an image in Painter (or paint a few lines, splashes of various colors etc on a new canvas).

Next, ensure brush ghosting is enabled in the Painter preferences, select either the Rectangular Selection, Oval Selection or Lasso tool from the Tools palette and create a selection (taking up a small to medium sized area of canvas).

Create a new default layer, and ensure that ‘Pick up Underlying Color’ is checked and ‘Preserve Transparency’ is unchecked. With the new layer still selected;

Select the Bacteria Sampler from the Sampling 1 brush category, and with your tablet stylus, hover over an area of interesting, contrasting imagery by holding the stylus approximately 1 cm above the tablet surface. You should be able to see the brush outline ghosting while you are doing this.

When you have an area of contrasting imagery within the brush ghosting outline, press down with the stylus, and make contact with the tablet surface (the brush ghosting outline should have now changed into a cursor). Now, without lifting the stylus tip off the tablet surface, drag the cursor inside the selection (unless you chose to initially select imagery which was already inside the selection).

Move the cursor around, within the selection (again, without lifting the stylus tip away from the tablet drawing surface). If all has gone to plan, you should now be seeing your first sampled texture. Repeat the same steps with the other Sampling variants and source imagery.

There is currently a limitation with this technique, which is that the initial sampled imagery (on the brush) is lost the moment the stylus tip is lifted off the tablet surface. If any of the Painter developers are reading this, I would like the facility to sample globally from anywhere on the monitor and perhaps hold down a key, so that as long as the key is pressed, my sampled imagery remains on the brush even if I lift the stylus away from the tablet surface.

4. Transparency Grain.

Unlike the Cover Grain category, the Transparency Grain variants allow some underlying imagery to show through (particularly in conjunction with high contrast paper textures). Note that the HTGRN and STGRN variants work inversely to each other, in relation to the light and dark areas of the paper grain. Adjust paper contrast to suite.

The beauty of layers is that it is possible to place the imagery created by these variants on different layers and move them over each other to create yet more textures. Don’t forget also that any textures created may be added to an Image Portfolio library and saved for later use.

5. TX_FX

The Canvas Relief variant gives a three dimensional (non-impasto) canvas texture look as a post-painting effect. Just rub the variant over small areas of imagery, two or three times over the same area, and watch the effect. You may need to adjust stylus pressure applied to the tablet, and opacity setting.

As the name suggests, the Comb variant produces a directional post-painting combed effect.

The Tex Straight Cloner variant can be used to transfer existing texture to other areas in the painting. Hold down the Option/Alt key, click on the initial clone source position, release the key and paint in the desired area.

Tex_Neg Depth GRN and the associated eraser are impasto depth variants. The Depth GRN variant works in conjunction with the currently selected paper texture.

Sorry I have not had time to produce any supporting images,

Let me know if they are of any use.

Oops, I almost forgot to provide the download link here

#16

This is a collection of brushes I have developed with a Japanese interpretation. Suminagashi means literally “ink-floating”.

The Suminagashi brush library can be downloaded from here.

Further demo images and tips on their usage can be found here.

David

#17

Hi everyone,

I’m fairly new to Painter. I have version XI.5. Is there a way to get my favorite brushes from Photoshop into Painter? Barring that, is there a good tutorial on how to create brushes in Painter?

I’m looking forward to exploring the dynamics of this application!

#18

I think I have finally made a pencil variant I am happy with…from a chalk variant. I’ve included the paper I made as well.

Hope you enjoy it.
Cris

#19

heres a variant i made to try and mimic photoshops liquify filter ( as nothing that comes with painter comes even close)

its a little slow but i think it gives decent results- well see for your self.

download here:slight_smile:

unzip and put in your application data folder e.g.

C:\Documents and Settings"your name"\Application Data\corel\Painter IX\Brushes"brush folder you want it in"

#20

For a start, the Painter help has a section called Brush Creator that will get you started.

Hot Rodding Your Brushes in Corel Painter:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=291013&highlight=Hot-rodding

John Derry’s various tutorials and some brushes:

http://homepage.mac.com/pixlart/main.htm (then click on ‘Resources’)