VJ Art Lab ⎯ Open Source as Medium
Open-source is more than just free software. It is an entirely new universe created and constantly fed by thousands of people around the world: designers, developers, architects and end users. Amazing and powerful tools are designed to solve all kinds of problems. Here's my reference list of some useful open-source-applications for static design (graphic design, illustration, modelling) and moving design (video desig and animation) which can be used for producing new but free content for VJ-sets.
Concept Art:
Krita is a open-source-software that gives you all the necessary tools for designing your concept art from scratch and not to die in the attempt. It has no trials and no subscriptions - forever.
It comes with over 100 preloaded professionally made brushes. These brushes give a good range of effects so you can see the variety of brushes that Krita has to offer.
If you have a shaky hand you can also add a stabilizer to your brush to smoothen it out. Krita includes 3 different ways to smooth and stabilize your brush strokes. There is even a dedicated Dynamic Brush tool where you can add drag and mass.
Built-in vector tools help you create comic panels. Select a word bubble template from the vector library and drag it on your canvas. Change the anchor points to create your own shapes and libraries. Add text to your artwork as well with the text tool. Krita uses SVG to manage its vector format.
You can also customize your brushes with over 9 unique brush engines. Each engine has a large amount of settings to customize your brush. Each brush engine is made to satisfy a specific need such as the Color Smudge engine, Shape engine, Particle engine, and even a filter engine. Once you are done creating your brushes, you can save them and organize them with Krita's unique tagging system.
It is easy to create seamless textures and patterns with Krita. The image will make references of itself along the x and y axis. Continue painting and watch all of the references update instantly. No more clunky offsetting to see how your image repeats itself.
Import brush and texture packs from other artists to expand your tool set. If you create some brushes that you love, share them with the world by creating your own bundles. Check out the brush packs that are available in the Resources area.
Use a drawing aid to assist you with vanishing points and straight lines. The Assistant Tool comes with unique assistants to help you make that perfect shape. These tools range from drawing ellipses to creating curvilinear perspective with the Fisheye Point tool.
In addition to painting, Krita comes with vector, filter, group, and file layers. Combine, order, and flatten layers to help your artwork stay organized.
Highlight a portion of your drawing to work on. There are additional features that allow you to add and remove from the selection. You can further modify your selection by feathering and inverting it. Paint a selection with the Global Selection Mask.
Krita supports full color management through LCMS for ICC and OpenColor IO for EXR. This allows you to incorporate Krita into your existing color management pipeline. Krita comes with a wide variety of ICC working space profiles for every need.
With OpenGL or Direct3D enabled, you will see increased canvas rotation and zooming speed. The canvas will also look better when zoomed out. The Windows version supports Direct3D 11 in place of OpenGL.
Open PSD files that even Photoshop cannot open. Load and save to PSD when you need to take your artwork across different programs.
Krita is the only painting application that lets you open, save, edit and author HDR and scene-referred images. With OCIO and OpenEXR support, you can manipulate the view to examine HDR images.
Powerful API for creating your own widgets and extending Krita. With using PyQt and Krita's own API, there are many possibilities. A number of plugins come pre-installed for your reference.
In addition to training and educational material found on the Internet, Krita produces its own training material to help you learn all of the tools fast.
Image Editing:
Let's talk about GIMP, a very complete raster graphics and photo editing application that allows you to manipulate your images professionally and prepare them for your VJ-footage. Through a wide range of plugins and scripts, you can correct color, apply filters, create animations, extract frames from video, save different codecs, save for web and much more. Is it intuitive? Yes. Is it all-in-one? Not really, you will need to search and install some plugins in order to do things like exporting .exr files or opening video files; nevertheless, there is clear and good documentation available. It runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Last but not least, there is an extension in Blender that allows interoperability with GIMP .xcf or .xjt files.
Vector Files:
How can you handle vector graphics instead of raster graphics? Inkscape is the answer. If you have ever used Illustrator, tools and interface will be very familiar to you. It includes precision, path and text tools, 3D extensions, filters, great pattern generators and more. Save as .svg or .eps and get ready to use your VJ logo vector path in any 3D or motion graphics software. It is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X (requires XQuartz). Either you just want to manipulate paths or create something more complex, Inkscape is a robust and professional software option at no cost.
Another fresh and multi-platform alternative is Gravit Designer.
3D Animation:
Do you really need to buy that expensive 3D application? Blender includes potent 3D modeling and texturing tools, an efficient photorealistic render engine, a real-time render engine called EEVEE, a node-based editor for materials, dynamics, awesome animation workflows to create your VJ loops, a compositor, and a video editor. It is not totally intuitive like other popular software, but it is worth learning and there is a lot of documentation out there. If you do not find the way to do something in Blender, do not worry, somewhere in the world one skillful developer has created a plugin and it is available for everyone.
Compositing:
Now that you have your image sequences, you will need to put all together and add some effects. If you do not have After Effects, there is an open-source compositing software called Natron. It is a cross-platform/ node-based tool, the UI is very neat and you have access to a variety of effects, including motion blur and color correction effects.
VJing:
Ok, but if you are a VJ, so you would need a video mixing tool. There are several open-source options out there, but to get started you can try GLMixer; it is one of the best (and maybe the most updated open-source VJ software project). This VJing application allows you to import and mix VJ footage such as videos, image files, vector graphics, algorithmic patterns and GPU plugins with endless possibilities (FreeFrame and Shadertoy). It includes an interesting circle UI for handling different files at the same time in a practical way. It works on Linux, OSX, and Windows. For video mapping projects you may prefer MadMap.
Screencast
Furthermore, there is ShareX, an incredible and complete screencast software. This kind of tool is essential for any productive workflow, either you want to share screenshots or record VJing tutorials. At no cost, you can capture specific regions, create GIFs or HD videos, benefit from constant updates and much more. It is only available for Microsoft Windows.
Open-source is more than just free software. It is an entirely new universe created and constantly fed by thousands of people around the world: designers, developers, architects and end users. Amazing and powerful tools are designed to solve all kinds of problems. Here's my reference list of some useful open-source-applications for static design (graphic design, illustration, modelling) and moving design (video desig and animation) which can be used for producing new but free content for VJ-sets.
Concept Art:
Krita is a open-source-software that gives you all the necessary tools for designing your concept art from scratch and not to die in the attempt. It has no trials and no subscriptions - forever.
It comes with over 100 preloaded professionally made brushes. These brushes give a good range of effects so you can see the variety of brushes that Krita has to offer.
If you have a shaky hand you can also add a stabilizer to your brush to smoothen it out. Krita includes 3 different ways to smooth and stabilize your brush strokes. There is even a dedicated Dynamic Brush tool where you can add drag and mass.
Built-in vector tools help you create comic panels. Select a word bubble template from the vector library and drag it on your canvas. Change the anchor points to create your own shapes and libraries. Add text to your artwork as well with the text tool. Krita uses SVG to manage its vector format.
You can also customize your brushes with over 9 unique brush engines. Each engine has a large amount of settings to customize your brush. Each brush engine is made to satisfy a specific need such as the Color Smudge engine, Shape engine, Particle engine, and even a filter engine. Once you are done creating your brushes, you can save them and organize them with Krita's unique tagging system.
It is easy to create seamless textures and patterns with Krita. The image will make references of itself along the x and y axis. Continue painting and watch all of the references update instantly. No more clunky offsetting to see how your image repeats itself.
Import brush and texture packs from other artists to expand your tool set. If you create some brushes that you love, share them with the world by creating your own bundles. Check out the brush packs that are available in the Resources area.
Use a drawing aid to assist you with vanishing points and straight lines. The Assistant Tool comes with unique assistants to help you make that perfect shape. These tools range from drawing ellipses to creating curvilinear perspective with the Fisheye Point tool.
In addition to painting, Krita comes with vector, filter, group, and file layers. Combine, order, and flatten layers to help your artwork stay organized.
Highlight a portion of your drawing to work on. There are additional features that allow you to add and remove from the selection. You can further modify your selection by feathering and inverting it. Paint a selection with the Global Selection Mask.
Krita supports full color management through LCMS for ICC and OpenColor IO for EXR. This allows you to incorporate Krita into your existing color management pipeline. Krita comes with a wide variety of ICC working space profiles for every need.
With OpenGL or Direct3D enabled, you will see increased canvas rotation and zooming speed. The canvas will also look better when zoomed out. The Windows version supports Direct3D 11 in place of OpenGL.
Open PSD files that even Photoshop cannot open. Load and save to PSD when you need to take your artwork across different programs.
Krita is the only painting application that lets you open, save, edit and author HDR and scene-referred images. With OCIO and OpenEXR support, you can manipulate the view to examine HDR images.
Powerful API for creating your own widgets and extending Krita. With using PyQt and Krita's own API, there are many possibilities. A number of plugins come pre-installed for your reference.
In addition to training and educational material found on the Internet, Krita produces its own training material to help you learn all of the tools fast.
Image Editing:
Let's talk about GIMP, a very complete raster graphics and photo editing application that allows you to manipulate your images professionally and prepare them for your VJ-footage. Through a wide range of plugins and scripts, you can correct color, apply filters, create animations, extract frames from video, save different codecs, save for web and much more. Is it intuitive? Yes. Is it all-in-one? Not really, you will need to search and install some plugins in order to do things like exporting .exr files or opening video files; nevertheless, there is clear and good documentation available. It runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Last but not least, there is an extension in Blender that allows interoperability with GIMP .xcf or .xjt files.
Vector Files:
How can you handle vector graphics instead of raster graphics? Inkscape is the answer. If you have ever used Illustrator, tools and interface will be very familiar to you. It includes precision, path and text tools, 3D extensions, filters, great pattern generators and more. Save as .svg or .eps and get ready to use your VJ logo vector path in any 3D or motion graphics software. It is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X (requires XQuartz). Either you just want to manipulate paths or create something more complex, Inkscape is a robust and professional software option at no cost.
Another fresh and multi-platform alternative is Gravit Designer.
3D Animation:
Do you really need to buy that expensive 3D application? Blender includes potent 3D modeling and texturing tools, an efficient photorealistic render engine, a real-time render engine called EEVEE, a node-based editor for materials, dynamics, awesome animation workflows to create your VJ loops, a compositor, and a video editor. It is not totally intuitive like other popular software, but it is worth learning and there is a lot of documentation out there. If you do not find the way to do something in Blender, do not worry, somewhere in the world one skillful developer has created a plugin and it is available for everyone.
Compositing:
Now that you have your image sequences, you will need to put all together and add some effects. If you do not have After Effects, there is an open-source compositing software called Natron. It is a cross-platform/ node-based tool, the UI is very neat and you have access to a variety of effects, including motion blur and color correction effects.
VJing:
Ok, but if you are a VJ, so you would need a video mixing tool. There are several open-source options out there, but to get started you can try GLMixer; it is one of the best (and maybe the most updated open-source VJ software project). This VJing application allows you to import and mix VJ footage such as videos, image files, vector graphics, algorithmic patterns and GPU plugins with endless possibilities (FreeFrame and Shadertoy). It includes an interesting circle UI for handling different files at the same time in a practical way. It works on Linux, OSX, and Windows. For video mapping projects you may prefer MadMap.
Screencast
Furthermore, there is ShareX, an incredible and complete screencast software. This kind of tool is essential for any productive workflow, either you want to share screenshots or record VJing tutorials. At no cost, you can capture specific regions, create GIFs or HD videos, benefit from constant updates and much more. It is only available for Microsoft Windows.
Year
2024
Exhibited
unrealized
Credits
la—krok
2024
Exhibited
unrealized
Credits
la—krok
