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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

#11

Post by Keavon »

egypturnash wrote: post #7
egypturnash wrote: post #6

This looks neat. I’ve been using Illustrator for twenty five years and have been wishing for a node-oriented replacement of the Appearance stack a lot lately. I will have to check it out when you have binaries, I hate web apps.

(Looking at the videos: global color swatches please, it’s super powerful to be able to change everything drawn in a color - fills, strokes, effects, etc - with a few clicks.)

I'm eager for that feature too! The node graph engine recently got the ability to represent that concept, so now I just need to find the time to design and build the UI for it. I utilize that feature a lot in other software so it'll be really helpful to have in Graphite as well.

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

#13

Post by skavi »

egypturnash wrote: post #6

This looks neat. I’ve been using Illustrator for twenty five years and have been wishing for a node-oriented replacement of the Appearance stack a lot lately. I will have to check it out when you have binaries, I hate web apps.

Is Electron really so different in your experience than a PWA?

Personally, I always try to use a PWA when the app is otherwise offered via Electron.

If it’s going to depend on a browser engine, it may as well be the one I already have open and update regularly.

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

#14

Post by bangaladore »

I had to re-read your intro paragraph a few times to understand what this is supposed to be.

I read it as a replacement for Blender, but upon testing it I was confused as everything was 2D and looks like Photoshop.

But no, you meant the next Photoshop, while referencing Blender as a popular open source version of closed-source 3D modeling/rendering software? Is that right?

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

#15

Post by Keavon »

adastra22 wrote: post #12

What UI crate are you using for the GUI?

Right now, it's a custom HTML/CSS/TypeScript component system using Svelte built to minimize bloat. But since Graphite is a data-driven graphics app and render engine, we are planning to gradually rewrite our UI components as Graphite documents— allowing us to design the editor's UI within its own editor UI. Once that happens, we can probably drop the web dependencies— although we've taken pains to ensure our current web dependencies are very lightweight and performant. All the slow parts of Graphite are due to backend engineering shortcuts we've taken to enable forward progress, and those are stopgaps that are actively being worked on to be rebuilt into proper, high-performance systems.

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

#16

Post by Keavon »

bangaladore wrote: post #14

I had to re-read your intro paragraph a few times to understand what this is supposed to be. I read it as a replacement for Blender, but upon testing it I was confused as everything was 2D and looks like Photoshop. But no, you meant the next Photoshop, while referencing Blender as a popular open source version of closed-source 3D modeling/rendering software? Is that right?

Upon rereading that paragraph, I suppose I didn't write that as clearly as I'd meant to. Blender is darn near perfect and there'd be no reason to replace it. So yes, as you figured out, I'm referring to becoming a second Blender but this time in the 2D realm: a generalist tool that uses actual innovation to catch up and then surpass its commercial competitors.

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

#17

Post by mightyham »

Congrats on releasing such a complex tool, that's a big achievement.

Someday, I'd like to try my hand at making my own vector graphics tool that contains a constraint solver. I am just an amateur when it comes to graphic design, but I often find Inkscape incredibly difficult to use. Certain shapes take bizarre combinations of commands to create and once a design is finished it can be hard to make adjustments. I find it much easier to make 2D designs as a fusion 360 sketches because constraining a bunch of lines and curves then playing with measurements is significantly more intuitive and interactive. Also maybe a tool like this already exists and I'm just not aware of it.

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

#18

Post by john01dav »

Keavon wrote: post #9
lacoolj wrote: post #5

This is really cool but I have an RTX 4080 and it's really struggling to open and subsequently manipulate the example art. Maybe just because it's in the browser?

That'd be because it's all CPU-based at the moment . So your 4080 is taking a vacation while your CPU hits the gym. That's obviously not ideal, but you'll have to trust me that it is due to long-term architectural planning reasons and not a blatant disregard for sensible development practices. Our node graph engine is really advanced—it's actually a scripting language built upon Rust and its type system—which will ha…

When you start supporting GPUs, what APIs do you plan to use (cuda, vulkan, dx, etc.)? It would be quite unfortunate to use a non-vendor-neutral API (for both OS and GPU vendor). I would probably use wgpu or vulkan for this.

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

#19

Post by Keavon »

mightyham wrote: post #17

Congrats on releasing such a complex tool, that's a big achievement. Someday, I'd like to try my hand at making my own vector graphics tool that contains a constraint solver. I am just an amateur when it comes to graphic design, but I often find Inkscape incredibly difficult to use. Certain shapes take bizarre combinations of commands to create and once a design is finished it can be hard to make adjustments. I find…

Definitely! And in fact, that is on our [roadmap](https://graphite.rs/features/#:~:text=CAD%2Dlike%20constrain...). Maybe you could get involved instead of making something separate.

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

#20

Post by mightyham »

Keavon wrote: post #19
mightyham wrote: post #17

Congrats on releasing such a complex tool, that's a big achievement. Someday, I'd like to try my hand at making my own vector graphics tool that contains a constraint solver. I am just an amateur when it comes to graphic design, but I often find Inkscape incredibly difficult to use. Certain shapes take bizarre combinations of commands to create and once a design is finished it can be hard to make adjustments. I find…

Definitely! And in fact, that is on our [roadmap]( https://graphite.rs/features/#:~:text=CAD%2Dlike%20constrain... ). Maybe you could get involved instead of making something separate.

Awesome! If I ever find the time, I will definitely look into contributing.
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