Project Dogwaffle team releases Howler 9.5

The Project Dogwaffle team has released Howler 9.5, the latest update to the VFX-friendly paint package.

New cloud painting tools and environment-creation options
There are a lot of new additions this time round, but the most obvious new features is the particle modeller (shown in the video above), which enables users to sculpt and animate particles in “cloud-like formations”.

The 3D Designer toolset gets new tools for mimicking erosion and sediment; options to set shading by slope and altitude; new lighting options, including ambient occlusion and raytraced shadows; and OBJ export.

Foliage and particle painting also now supports ambient occlusion, along with Z-buffering.

Other new features
For animators, the onion skinning tool has been updated to display more layers, with a new red shift feature to make it easier to identify past and future frames.

Photographers get an updated local contrast filter that ‘stretches’ local colour range to mimic the look of HDRIs. Howler also now supports up to 64 threads or cores, up from 12 in previous releases.

Pricing and availability
Howler 9.5 is available now for Windows. It’s a paid upgrade from previous 9.x releases. New licences cost $89, although the software is currently available at a $10 launch discount.

Read a full list of new features in Howler 9.5
(In the ‘What’s new’ section of the website: also includes videos of the new features)