Friday, January 15th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

Project Dogwaffle team unveils Howler 10

Originally posted on 16 November 2015. Scroll down for news of the commercial release.

The Project Dogwaffle Team has announced Howler 10, the new version of its VFX-friendly digital paint tool, adding a new option to fix bad blocks in video automatically, and updating the particle and foliage-painting tools.

New video repair and foliage painting options
The biggest new feature in Howler 10 is probably the new block interpolation option (above), which automatically fixes missing or corrupted frames. The demo shows it on a simple CG animation, but it works on live video.

In addition, the particle painting tools have been extended: orbicles (Howler’s ‘orbital particle brushes’) can now use gradients and new line styles, and come with a much larger real-time preview.

The foliage painting system has also been rethought, removing the need to paint into a Z-buffer, and adding a number of new presets, which you can see around 05:00 in the video below.

Updates to the GUI and core systems
In addition, the software’s GUI and many of its existing systems have been rewritten.

Key changes include a new, more customisable media browser that supports previews for all of Howler’s media types, including particles, bristles, orbicles and foliage.

There is also a new undo system, including an undo browser from which changes can be undone non-linearly and the option to save undo profiles to disc; along with a new autosave system.

The colour picker has also been revamped to integrate colour themes and pigment profiles.

In addition, memory efficiency has been improved, particularly for animation work. According to the update notes, “animation operations that use the swap disc are 25% faster”.

You can read a full list of changes and new features via the link at the foot of the story.

Updated 15 January 2016: Howler 10 is now shipping for Windows only with a recommended price of $79.99, though at the time of posting, the software is available at an additional launch discount.

Read a full list of new features in Howler 10

Visit the Howler product website
(Inlcludes download link for the trial version of Howler 10)