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Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

graphite.rs

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Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#101

Post by Keavon »

WillAdams wrote: post #69
Keavon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! No support for custom scripts yet. But the whole concept is that we're basically building a WYSIWYG editor on top of a node-based compositor on top of a visual programming language (so that's three products in one, lots of work ahead for us!). The result is that the whole thing is a programmatic data pipeline and you'll be able to write custom scripts in both node and code form, then compose them into reusabl…

Is it possible to draw a Bézier curve, then decompose it in the Node Editor to a set of numeric nodes which input into a Bézier node? I couldn't figure out how to do that (mentioned it elsethread).

You could ask that in our Discord and we can give more advanced guidance, but that isn't something we specifically have nodes for yet. We are building a spreadsheet view for working with all the data in numeric form, and once we have that plus some nodes for interacting with the spreadsheet data, your use case will become more naturally represented.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#103

Post by Keavon »

_flux wrote: post #88
bufferoverflow wrote: post #24

The appeal of Blender for me is not just the open-sourceness, but also the fact that everything in it is programmable. Any action you can do via UI, you can do by calling some Python method. Why create a new project instead of advancing InkScape though?

My understanding is that InkScape is foremost an SVG editor. If SVG can't do it, then InkScape can't either. This seems quite somewhat limiting for a general-purpose graphical editor, aspiring to integrate good bitmap editing support as well later. Though, I guess it does somehow extend the SVG format, as it provides saving as either Inkscape SVG or plain SVG.. So maybe my understanding is incorrect?

Yes, and furthermore, Inkscape doesn't even have its own file format. You save your work to SVG. So the entire program is intrinsically tied to the SVG spec, and won't ever expand beyond that. It wouldn't be a good base to try and extend into a highly generalized program meeting the Graphite vision.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#105

Post by Keavon »

bethemoly wrote: post #75

This sounds like a big project—congrats on releasing it! Just curious, as a business other than a hobby, do you have enough resources to see it through?

Everything we do is bootstrapped through donations and volunteer development time. When our main other core contributor graduates in a year, we'll need the funds to hire him, so we will be pushing that donation angle more in the coming year as well as applying for grants. I personally would like to be paid eventually, but I'm well-equipped to keep at this for a while before finances become a problem in my life. I can be not paid, but can't pay others. As a project, we have longer-term business plans that let us stay sustainable and independent and not wholly dependent upon donations: a combination of asset store payment processing, cloud document storage, and render farm services for people who wish to opt into paying for those value-adds that are otherwise not part of the main product. A decade from now, I'd like to actually recoup my investment, but I don't want to sell out to investors.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#106

Post by WillAdams »

Keavon wrote: post #101
WillAdams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to draw a Bézier curve, then decompose it in the Node Editor to a set of numeric nodes which input into a Bézier node? I couldn't figure out how to do that (mentioned it elsethread).

You could ask that in our Discord and we can give more advanced guidance, but that isn't something we specifically have nodes for yet. We are building a spreadsheet view for working with all the data in numeric form, and once we have that plus some nodes for interacting with the spreadsheet data, your use case will become more naturally represented.

This is a usage model which I would advocate for --- the ability to record series of actions and then edit them made using WordBASIC to automate Microsoft Word far more accessible/discoverable for me.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#107

Post by WillAdams »

WillAdams wrote: post #63

This is almost exactly the tool I have wanted for a long while. The one thing is when something is drawn in the interactive UI, rather than becoming a single node which cannot be decomposed/worked with via sub-elements, it should become (or there should be an option for) "ungrouping" it to an equivalent set of nodes/values --- if this capability is present, I couldn't figure it out, and I'd be glad to know of it.

See answer at:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41862107

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#108

Post by Keavon »

WillAdams wrote: post #63

This is almost exactly the tool I have wanted for a long while. The one thing is when something is drawn in the interactive UI, rather than becoming a single node which cannot be decomposed/worked with via sub-elements, it should become (or there should be an option for) "ungrouping" it to an equivalent set of nodes/values --- if this capability is present, I couldn't figure it out, and I'd be glad to know of it.

Feel free to drop by our Discord and go into more detail about this. I think we may need to discuss it for me to understand exactly what you're describing.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#109

Post by Keavon »

zdw wrote: post #83

Is there a comparison/contrast with Krita anywhere?

Krita is a painting application. Graphite is a vector editing application. There is currently no overlap between the two apps. We intend to eventually build a painting application workflow, but that isn't something we're focused on yet and we'll likely prioritize other area first because Krita is a competent tool for painting already, which digital artist should use for that workflow until we someday have the time to build something even better.

Re: Show HN: Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app

#110

Post by Keavon »

fwip wrote: post #93

Very cool! One comment, one question. 1) panning the node graph of the leaves demo seemed slow / laggy on my macbook pro in chrome, which gave an initial low-quality feeling - moving nodes was nice and responsive. 2) Given that this is written in Rust (compiled), is it on the roadmap to 'export' the parameterized designs into some callable library code? e.g: a game engine that calls "leaves = generate_texture("changi…

1. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41854076 2. Yes, you got it! That's very much something we are building towards, and you hit it on the nail in describing how that will work and the utility it will provide to people across many industries from game dev to backend services.
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