KumoWorks was released!

[Shun Iwasawa]

Dear Users,

We just released KumoWorks, a new open-source software for making cloud scenery.

Please give it a try!

https://opentoonz.github.io/e/download/kumoworks.html

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Shun

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Shun Iwasawa

OpenToonz team

[Rodney]

Here's an early set of clouds from me.

The only thing I'm not seeing right now is Preview.

That doesn't seem to be working for me.

Perhaps that is a GPU related thing?

Looking good Shun!

[Shun Iwasawa]

Hi Rodney, have you tried pressing Enter (Return) key on the viewer after drawing the silhouette?

[Rodney]

Thanks Shun!  Using the Enter Key (with the cloud object selected) does indeed render the preview.

Nice.  Very nice.

Now, back to experimenting! :)

Added:  I should mention that during my troubleshooting to get Preview to work I had changed the Preview Quality to 'Full' and that made even using the Enter key seem not to work at first.  I changed the setting to '1/4' and it previewed immediately.

[Shun Iwasawa]

I had changed the Preview Quality to 'Full' and that made even using the Enter key seem not to work at first.  I changed the setting to '1/4' and it previewed immediately.

The Preview Quality is inverse proportion to the size of a single voxel filling the cloud bounding box.

Setting the quality to "Full" will generate 1-pixel-size voxels and will take roughly 64 times longer than "1/4" quality. (As the bounding box is three dimensional, 4x4x4=64)

I think it would better to work (or even to do the final render) on "1/3" or "1/4", since the cloud is basically blurred and IMO the higher quality has only limited effects in appearance.

[Rodney]

Good info!  64 times longer is quite significant.  

More fun:

These are two separate clouds and I'm tempted to animate them moving in Opentoonz but... will leave that for later.

[Jane Eyre]

Very cool!  It seems pretty easy to use.

When the program first opens, due to the window size, you can't tell that there are dials in the shape settings.

Are there supposed to be any menu items? It's very unusual to have absolutely nothing in the menu on macOS:

It definitely needs an app icon too. 

Actually drawing and adjusting the clouds works well. It would be great to have shortcuts to switch back to draw mode and to open the render window. It would also be nice if adjusting the dials automatically changed the preview - without needing to press enter each time. I kept wondering why nothing in the preview was changing...

When in the render settings, having the button for selecting the folder location looks unclear.

Rendering combined images works fine. When trying to render each cloud as its own image, only the first cloud renders. 

Reorganizing the workspace is really easy. Personally, I'd place the cloud layers somewhere a little more visible.

It's impressive what you've been able to create from an outline!

[Rodney]

[Rodney]

Shun,

I seem to have run up against two (2) issues in Kumoworks.

1.  If there is only one Cloud Layer (say we create many but then remove all but one) and then delete the only remaining cloud layer... Kumoworks will crash.

2.  Using the render option 'Each Cloud in it's own Image' doesn't appear to render more than one cloud/layer

It may be that all Cloud/layers are rendering but rendering over the top of the previously rendered image.

What is odd about this is that I know I've had Kumoworks render clouds out separately before...

[Jane Eyre]

1.  If there is only one Cloud Layer (say we create many but then remove all but one) and then delete the only remaining cloud layer... Kumoworks will crash.

I can't delete the only remaining cloud layer, so I don't get a crash (macOS). 

On the UI side, changes to the workspace don't save. Also, the delete button (for the cloud layers) is hidden (at least with the default window size). 

Personally, when the window is too short, I would hide the add/remove text, so that both the add and remove icons can display. The more/arrow icon is the size of the delete icon, so it's strange to need it to access remove. I'm not sure the text is even necessary when there is room. A trash can is really standard to get rid of layers or etc. The add icon could be made a little more obvious if the plus sign was larger.

Interestingly, if you create 2 new cloud shapes, and then enter preview, only the 2nd shape shows the preview view. I would expect all cloud shapes to preview when in preview.

This really is a lot of fun! I'm impressed by the amount of variation that is possible.

[Momotron2000]

hello hello,

I am trying Kumoworks which is pretty cool but there are some issues appearing.

Just imported a reference image from the internet and draw clouds over it in different layers. After rendering somehow, only the BG and one cloud appeared in my folder. The other single clouds are rough drawings in the folder above. I attached some screenshots. Hope it's helpful.

[Shun Iwasawa]

Hi Rodney, Jane and Momotron2000,

Thank you for reporting the problems. Please let me move them to GitHub Issues page in order to make it easier for me to keep track of them.

[DarrenT]

Just in case you want a bit of a tour of KumoWorks, here's mine. Hope it helps: https://youtu.be/bnNUdYF1lkE

[Rodney]

Nicely demo'd Darren.  :)

[gabc...@gmail.com]

Can't help but think about having a special "Cloud" type of layer inside OpenToonz, and be able to animate that Sun, some of the could parameters or even the cloud shape itself... :E

...just dreaming, I know.

[Pipeline TD]

Dear Shun,

Kumoworks is pretty cool! I am sure that you heard of GAUGAN by NVIDIA:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/research/ai-playground/

The scientific paper is right here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.07291

I just imagine to have not just a tool for clouds but also for seas, skies, grass etc but in a specific style that would fit to Open Toonz