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A new exclusive Dakka feature has been released... our army/model painter.

Basically, I've made a utility which allows you to take any image (so long as it is hosted on dakka), draw shapes around it to indicate the bits you want to recolour, and then it will let you apply any paints to it to test out colour schemes quickly and easily.

It does not work in internet explorer, but does work in firefox, safari, chrome and opera (including iOS devices). The technology is too cutting edge for most versions of IE (multiple layers of full html5 canvases with pretty much all 2d canvas functions used for those who are curious).

All image processing is done on your computer, so if your computer is old (or it is an ipad, phone, etc), it will be sloooow colouring large images with lots of complex polygons. Drawing out the shapes for recolouring an image can be quite slow and have random slowdowns as well, so it is quite time consuming to do (about 30 mins per model). Once you start getting around 40 shapes per image, it starts to get slower and slower marking those shapes.

You can reach the army painter by clicking 'Army Painter' in the site navigation. At the moment we have a Tyranid Zoanthrope, Imperial Guard (cadian), Warpath Enforcer and a Brushfire Vandalands Rat Lord to let you test out your colour schemes. We can add literally unlimited numbers of models so please do have a go at trying to add some that you might want to play with. I hope that we'll at least be able to get troop level miniatures for every faction in every major wargame in good time, but it all depends on how many of you want to go to the effort of adding them.

Here's an example of it working. This is the base model photograph for the Tyranid (added and processed by Yakface):


and here are two colour schemes he was able to quickly create for fun, showing the power of the new feature:



As you can see, highlights and shading are replicated on the image. You can paint over bare metal or plastic, but the finish is not as good (although the colouring is more consistent). The imperial guard model is over bare plastic as an example.

The main painting area/current model list is here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/painter.jsp

If you make any awesome model templates, just PM me or post here and I'll approve them for display in that list.

We'll add more paint ranges in the future too. I just need the hex or RGB codes for the paints in a range to add it. Metallics are also handled differently - if you choose a metallic colour, it will automatically add a shine to the model too. At the moment I have the hex codes for Vallejo Game Color as well as old citadel. I can get them for the new citadel ones but will take a while, so if anyone else wants to do the hard work doing that, then the new citadel paints will be listed and useable faster. I'll also add a 'free' colour selection so you can use any colour, not just existing paints too soon.

At the moment you can create unlimited numbers of models and they are only visible to you, so feel free to play around with it a lot. Nothing you enter will be visible to the general public unless you want it to be (either by sending links to people or requesting that we make it public), so have a go and if you mess up, dont worry about it as no harm done.

Please do head to:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/painter-add.jsp
and have a go at putting up some models for recolouring. The main bit of advice is to avoid models with lots of dark coloured areas on them as the darker an area is, the harder it is to recolour without the detail going all strange. If you have a completely grey model with highlights and shadows on it, then that is the most perfect possible base for the painter to work from, but it will work with literally any image in the gallery or attachments.

Please try recolouring the existing templates as well. They are a bit rough as we are still getting used to the system, but should let you see the power and flexibility of this new section of dakka which will hopefully be a big draw for anyone who likes to paint their stuff.

With luck and effort, we'll end up with army painters for every unit in every game. We only need one well painted example of a model to be able to add it to the army painter, and our gallery has almost half a million images to choose from. Lots of fun lies ahead!

Let me know what you think anyway! Plenty of visual tweaks, a few bugs and a load more features still need to be added, but the time has come for playing with it publicly

I'll head off some comments right now as a quick FAQ:
1. You can only use images hosted on dakka - your browser will have a security error trying to process external images and it will just not work.
2. Internet Explorer does not support the features we use in the army painter yet. It therefore does not work on any version of IE, but works on every other browser.
3. You can use painted or plain miniatures. Models with a lot of darkness/black will not work well as a base image as it masks most of the detail. Painted models will hide some detail but will look better overall and will show nice highlight effects.
4. Save early and save often when drawing shapes on a template image if you are making a new template. When I add one, I go through about 10 saves over 30-45 minutes.
5. The interface is a bit dodgy and not very intuitive. It will be improved later.
6. You will be able to choose from other paint ranges and free colour selection options in the future. If anyone wants to provide me with hex codes for paint ranges then I can add them much faster.
7. More models will be added as and when I get the time, or as and when people put in the effort to add them. Anybody can add them.
8. All image processing is done on your computer, so if it is slow, use a faster computer.

Above all, enjoy! Improvements will be coming in the future, but I wanted to get it up for people to test and play with now rather than have it sit in the background for months as I tweak it.

Feel free to offer comments/opinions/etc in this thread, provided they are not answered in the 8 point FAQ above (especially on the known interface issues and saving requirements).

Thanks

Woot! Excellent launch, Lego

Great idea, all we need now is a gallery full of generic unpainted miniatures from various ranges.

Wow! This is an wonderful feature! Thanks Legoburner!

That is seriously cool

But where am I going to find 7 Year War miniatures here.....

Hah, I knew of it before this post!
Hah!

It's really great though, hope more mini's will be add soon!

 kenshin620 wrote:
That is seriously cool

But where am I going to find 7 Year War miniatures here.....

If you have any, you take a picture of it and upload it to the dakka gallery, copy the image url and add it to the growing database

It's a really cool feature

Here's some WIP shots I've gotten of a mini I added.

This could be really neat for my Dark Talon attempts...

Great work, Alf!

This is a great feature! I'll have to let some non dakka friends know, maybe they'll finally join lol.

Awesome Idea, I can try out ideas for my DPM Space Marines.

COWARDLY DOGS

Lego, I salute you. Hmm... we need a "salute" orkmoticon... have a in the meantime

Great stuff Lego. Looking foward to using it.

 Rolt wrote:
Great idea, all we need now is a gallery full of generic unpainted miniatures from various ranges.

i c wut you did thar

Awesome feature! Way to go above and beyond!

Wow. Not just a great idea, but really really REALLY well executed.

Very cool and something that sets dakka apart from other online galleries of minis.

Exalted! And I'll be letting my friends know about this too, very useful Dakka, thanks Legoburner!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, consider the saluting Orkmoticon seconded, brilliant idea!

This is superb, i will share the word.

Thanks all. Since posting, someone's made a really nice Heavy Gear NuCoal painter here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/painter.jsp?i=14

Congratulations to that person for being the first to take advantage of the new setup.

This painter is something I've wanted to create since 2007, but never had the available technology to do it without either a server dedicated to crunching the images, or client side technology reaching the point where it is possible to do on your own machines (which it now is - woohoo!)

I was telling someone about this in meatspace the other day and they asked how much we were going to charge to use it. As with everything else on Dakka, it will be free forever!

Wow, this is just awesome. Thanks for putting this up!

Lego, can you incorporate a way to delete templates as well as crediting the original creators? I put up two of the same model but I have no way that I know of to delete the first one.

Deleting is a planned addition, but is quite low priority as your list of bad templates is only visible to you, and you can rename them at will to 'bad - delete' or something like that to get them out of your main list. Thanks

Nice work. Very impressive. I'll be checking it out when I have new colour schemes to work out...

This is impressive. Seriously good work Lego (and anyone else involved!)

Was this a group project, or was it all you?

Other people have made the templates and did some testing, but the idea, code and implementation was entirely me. Thanks for the positive feedback everyone, always motivating to hear it

Excellent work Lego, this is why I frequent Dakka on an almost daily basis. Great and inovative content, friendly (in most cases) users and all FREE !!

Is there any way to go back and edit a template you have created? I thought I saw a button but I cannot find it now.

Wow. Color me impressed. Very well done, lego.