I see. I didn’t want to come in as impolite, I just recalled this a few days ago as something I would have loved to see completed. I apologize.
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Everything related to this feature is here, you could say that this is really dead and unless someone wants to continue it I doubt that the original developer would continue it.
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I recently merged this into the latest release branch of Krita and did a local build using the docker build instructions, spat it out as an AppImage to run on Linux. Everything went fine, but the comments above are right that it adds a huge number of blend modes, the drop down is a little unwieldy >w<
However.. this is also the most excited I’ve been about a Krita feature in a while. These blend modes are incredible, as an artist that makes heavy use of the “Greater” blend mode, as soon as my build was done I spent about 6 hours streaming with these and I’m never going back, I will merge this patch and self-build every new Krita version that gets released. This is making me faster at doing soft/sloppy coloring for commission sketches, and the results just look better. I’m using fewer layers. It’s just a joy to work with. We are missing out by not having this in Krita proper.
So, all of the comments above are valid. This is too many blend modes to throw in at once without separating out the alpha channels.. BUT.. if you’re an artist and are capable of running your own build for your system, then sit down and use this thing for just 3 minutes and you will immediately see what I mean. It is incredible, this makes Krita a more capable art program. There are some amazing features coming up in Krita 5.3 soon that I am very excited about (I cannot wait to start using the new comic panel tools), and I bring that up only to emphasize how good this feels to paint with - that I think this is a more exciting feature than most of the stuff I’m looking forward to.
Now, this has been sitting as an open pull request for 2 years at this point (or close to it); it is pretty obvious that the full version of this is not going to get finished any time soon. X3
But this doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I would really seriously advocate for merging in one of these modes. They’re all neat, but just having “Wet Normal” would enable a lot of the same stuff in a round-about way - because you can still use layer blend modes to mimic many of these effects (and in some cases you still might want to because once you reach 100% alpha, the color mixing will still require you to do some smoothing to avoid ghosting effects and there’s no real way to mimic the greater effect for color pigments on a single layer). :3
Perfect is the enemy of the good; obviously I would LOVE to have the full separated blend modes that were being talked about up-thread. But.. take the existing pull request as is, fix the very, very minor merge conflict on one line (I just went with the head), and then delete or comment out all of the registrations except for “Wet Normal”, and you’ll end up with one of the most useful brush blending modes in this entire program. That can be merged. The other blend modes can get uncommented or come back later when somepony who’s good with C++ and Qt and has the energy has time to handle the alpha separation.
”Wet Normal” on its own (even if it’s the only blending mode added) is a major differentiating feature for Krita. I am not aware of another drawing program that has an equivalent to this.
I’m speaking as somepony who draws inside Krita as my full-time job: using this feels amazing. The “Wet Normal” mode (as it exists today with zero changes other than trimming down the other registrations) is an easy way to get a killer feature that allows for coloring/blending workflows that are not otherwise possible to do to the same level of quality. I don’t know enough about Krita’s processes to know what else is required for this - if it needs more tests, if there’s additional cleanup that didn’t happen.
But if it’s only the UI that’s the only blocker, then.. I dunno, this should be merged.
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A possible solution would be to allow the user to select the blend modes they want, similar to how brush bundles can be disabled.
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Definitely, but I think even that requires making a UI, and it doesn’t seem like anypony is available to do that. What I’m getting at is that - if anypony feels comfortable looking at tests or anything else that needs to be signed off on - the extra blend modes could be commented out and this could be merged down as is, with no changes and no additional UI work.
And definitely there can be additional UI work to make it better in the future, but Krita is losing out on an amazing feature by waiting for somepony to have the time to do that.
The smallest version of this is have one more blend mode in the dropdown menu, have that be the only one, and then it could be shipped. If we think about methods to actually solve the problem of having too many blend modes in the dropdown, then this isn’t going to get merged probably. So I want to caution against actually trying to solve the problem - I think the solution is that we don’t need a solution right now, one more blend mode won’t make or break the UI, and while Krita shouldn’t get into the habit of adding more of them until the problem is solved, this one is worth shipping earlier.
Personally think that Deevad’s idea could work best, specially considering how digital painting-focused is Krita, maybe they could be the default for the watercolors and/or the mix brushes, and assuming that you can’t select more than one blending option, the drop-down menu could just be reserved for the wet mode(s) (assuming it’s not a hassle to code in that is)
And who knows, could also be useful to set terrain for a realistic blending mode (or something close to it)
I love Deevad’s idea, and I think it makes a ton of sense, and would minimize maintenance work as well <3
BUT.. is anypony available to build it? Because this pull request has been open for two years. :3
My opinion on UI is that one can learn GIMP. Set up a large group and then add the new blending modes.
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If somepony here is willing to submit a pull request with the new UI, amazing. I’ll support it 100%.
If talking about the new UI is going to mean this doesn’t get merged, then the UI is a distraction. I think this should get merged into 5.3. I don’t know enough C++ to literally build a UI for it and create a new pull request, but if there aren’t additional test requirements, I could create a pull request or.. I don’t know the process, try to update the existing one? That’s not me saying nopony should do a UI if they have the time.
It’s me asking, is there somepony here who can commit to taking the time to build a UI in Krita’s existing codebase and submit a pull request? I can’t commit to that, I don’t have the time or expertise. And if nopony can step up and say “yes, I could do this and I want to”, my opinion is that we should merge one of the blend modes into 5.3, and leave it open for whenever somepony does have the time.
I don’t want aspiration to get in the way of one of the most exciting features I’ve seen in Krita in a while.
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Having played with the the Wet Normal blend mode for a little over a week with commissions, this is straight up changing my “sloppy” coloring process in a way that’s a lot faster, uses fewer layers, and (imo) looks better than what I was doing.
I can’t promise when I’ll have time to do this, it might still be a few weeks at least - I need to find a period where I’m not focused so heavily on commissions. But when I have time I’m going to clean this pull request up, fix the merge error, and re-submit it with only the Wet Normal blend mode added.
I don’t really know C++ super well (I don’t know entirely how the code here works), and I don’t have a ton of experience with Krita’s codebase. If anypony feels they are more situated for this and they have the time to look at it, I would welcome somepony else jumping in - I certainly don’t know enough to add tests, and importantly don’t have the time to learn this stuff.
But, I can fix a merge error and delete some extra lines of code, so if that’s all that needs to happen then I’m happy to make a new pull request, and I’ll link it here once I have time to do so. The pull request I submit will have zero UI changes. It will add a single blend mode (“Wet Normal”) to the dropdown and nothing else. If anypony knows anything else that was blocking with this other than the need for a UI to handle multiple blend modes, let me know so I can avoid wasting my time on it lol X3
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It would be amazing if a Krita dev could help you out. This sounds like such a good feature.