SpiralGraphics announces Genetica 3.0!

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Sorry Kraelin, with you being one of the high lama filter forger,

and when the heck did i become that? i'm still a novice, as far as i'm concerned. my only claim to FF fame is that i was here before some of the others and i'm prettier than steve or carl, of course.

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Conniekat8 wrote: You know what... I haven't gotten into it that far

----Oh, o.k. Well, maybe give us an update later on then when ya do. The whole make-yer-own HDRI lighting thing does sound cool, I just dunno if it'd be worth upgrade cost is all. I did buy 2.5 basic, and am hoping V3 is bit user friendlier in some ways ( ie = more like FF ha-ha). It's certainly a good program, it's just looking a bit dated with no HDRI lighting, and the one filter-one output design is well, archaic now with FF on the scene. But all that said, Genetica is certainly a contender, and V3 might even push them ahead for a while eh.

jffe

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Your filters always looked to me like those made by one of 'the big boys' around here, so I thought you are one of them. Seriously! I'm not being sarcastic or snotty or tongue in cheekish. I always saw you as one of the guys 'in the know'.

well, thank you, connie

Did anyone here sign up and play with the v3 beta yet?

i went and looked, dilla, but didnt see anywhere to sign up.

cool, jffe. thanks

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Kraellin wrote: i went and looked, dilla, but didnt see anywhere to sign up.

It's right here.

Don't think I'll sign up though... no time!

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Sign Guy wrote: If there's anything I can try for you or answer I'll be happy to do so.

I'd be interested in initial impressions and a comparison to FF, of course.

Like ssamm mentioned, G3 has every bit as many if not considerably more, options and possibilities than FF (although it should be noted that the pro-pro version of G3 costs what, double what FF does?). My main gripe is still the interface and lack of preset handling/controls per filter. I can't for the life of me, figure out why they wouldn't fix that part, they'd blow FF away with G3 if they had, but they did not.

jffe

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James wrote: But yeah for me its one of my favorite apps now

Me too

Next version of FF is going to have some catching up.
Sorry, if I'm not taking time to elaborate on details, this is just a quick pass through stop

hehe, dilla. diff strokes from diff folks, i guess.

Nope, there's something even worse: No FF v2 without a Mac version first!

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Crapadilla wrote: Did anyone here sign up and play with the v3 beta yet?

Yeah, I did.....but I haven't had the chance to get into yet.....

Thanx for the interesting comparison info, James......

Hey jffe, I got that letter too and downloaded it.....but I haven't installed it to check it out yet.....hopefully I'll have a chance before the beta period ends.....

I still don't have time to learn Genetica, but apparently beta 5 is available with a bunch more fixes and a few additional features/options.

jffe

Unless I missed it here, I'd add that the actual filter editing workspace in G3 needs a lot of work. You cannot zoom out or move about with the nice Photoshop style hand, so you're left to use the scroll bars as a filter becomes too complex to view all at once. And if you have the same nodes appearing more than once then you have no easy way to tell them apart such as being able to rename them or tag them in some way.

I mentioned this to Atlas and he acknowledged the problem has a high priority as soon as the beta test is completed and G3 is released.

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I started checking Genetica out.....and these are my first impressions.... 1) FF has better construction/editting power towards photo-realism. Genetica seems to have a hint of being "surreal" in everything.....and just can't quite break the photo-realistic threshhold like the way I can with FF.....which is ultimately the most important thing to me. Don't get me wrong, Genetica is fantastic for the lion's share of texture apps!!!

Don't know if i can agree there but there are reasons the realism is not as common with Genetica atm, heres a few good realism examples imo -

http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9202
http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9189
http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9066
http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9060

Basically as with everything it's the user that makes the output so the results vary, i can tell you that with Genetica i have made far more realistic stuff a lot faster than i ever did with FF but then again i have built up a library of saved tools i have made while using it and the bigger it gets the faster and better workflow gets for me.

The realism i expect you mean with FF is the HDRI engine it uses and it is indeed great, the way FF works is you give the material a few inputs and get a nice result and because it's basically the main output everyone uses it so you see the reflections and metal effects etc way more with FF especially in the library. However with Genetica the HDRI/environments is quite new and at the moment limited to the canvas only really in terms of styles being applied, i think this is why you don't see the same in Genetica at the moment, i have requested that one should be able to apply a style to a noise in Genetica though and i think thats getting added at some point, then you could have a smooth seamless silver surface just like you see in FF a lot BUT when it is added i think in Genetica it will be better because you have the style and environment designers now and you can use noises and import images and all sorts of cool things rather than just choosing from a few HDRI in a list to adjust.

One thing i find with FF however is you can get darker colors due to the lighting things and sometimes it's nicer to have a non shaded texture depending on the goal anyway but for 2d design work, realism is great.

So yeah imo it's possible to get similar results or better but with Genetica you can layer and decay things as much as you want really and just decide on what look you want overall. What i like to do a lot is mix things part way so it's visible but not full strength an effect. I think with a few adjustments like the styles outside of canvas, noise presets, group control designing with presets/custom labs it will be great imo.

Another option you have with it is using multiple images so in terms of realism you could say use a stone texture image, make it seamless in or out of the app, convert it to noise, use the noise as a mask to decay or re-color areas of a digital texture and of course do this method with whatever you want, so you can't get more realistic than using the real thing in the process

And btw i work with image textures and Genetica is also great for adjusting photos to be seamless, re-coloring, sharpening blurs, re-filling areas with new things and so on so a great all around tool really imo.

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Hey Fred, I would agree with that as well..... Like I said....the biggest thing for me are the limitations of Genetica.....you just can't push the boundaries with it like you can with FF.....as clearly evidenced by ThreeDee's recent "Wecome to the Matrix" work..... I may be wrong.....but I don't think that I could create anything like this in Genetica.....

With genetica HDRI stuff like that is easy now as you can use them in the labs etc, heres a quick example of something similar -

http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9203

Pretty much doing the same thing really in that it's mapping a HDRI to a shape input, however on the image you posted it's more rounded than the link i posted.

And i can't see FF doing something like this yet for example -

http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9170
http://www.spiralforums.biz/index.php?showtopic=9065

Well not as fast as it would take in Genetica anyway

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Unless I missed it here, I'd add that the actual filter editing workspace in G3 needs a lot of work. You cannot zoom out or move about with the nice Photoshop style hand, so you're left to use the scroll bars as a filter becomes too complex to view all at once. And if you have the same nodes appearing more than once then you have no easy way to tell them apart such as being able to rename them or tag them in some way.

Yeah i agree, navigating the work area can be annoying at the moment, i know atlas said they will be working on that, middle mouse button features etc and drag and drop things to move things from one slot to another etc.

Another

Hmm ok, so my bad, Wecome to the Matrix is totally different to what i thought you meant from looking at that screenshot you posted sorry Here is something i made in Genetica -

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James wrote: And i can't see FF doing something like this yet for example -

<image deleted by moderator per author's request>

Easy in FF...

James how are the render times in comparison to FF?

Flu

Thats interesting James, to me render speed would be a big selling plus

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James wrote: another thing i find is when i render in FF my cpu goes to around 100%

in the filter options you can adjusted cpu usage between 10% and 90%.

your suggestions for FF rendering sound sensible

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James wrote: Edit - Oh and in Genetica i can minimize the app when rendering, but in FF you can't it seems which is very annoying imo.

----You can put a *show desktop* shortcut in your quick launch toolbar though and get around that.

jffe

Added: If Genetica 3 doesn't support multiple core cpus, that'd just be sad really.