PanoPainter Reviews

I really wanted to love this, but there is just so much missing. Maybe I'm just missing something, but layers do not seem to work at all! Whenever I make another layer, it acts like I didn't make one at all. The motions make me want to puke. It's far too sensitive, I could hardly imagine what it would be like to play in VR! The brushes compare to MS Paint tools, and the bucket tool does not fill in all the way. This is hardly worth a 50% off price of 9.99, let alone the full 20 dollar price! This game still has potential, however, and I hope the developers make this into something truly special!

After the recent development and a surprisingly pleasant support experience, I've decided to update this review and change its rating to Positive. It would seem the developer is passionate about this project in the best way possible, and tries to fix bugs as quickly as possible. In fact the one I reported had just been fixed in the lates update. And I even got my corrupted file recovered. That I think is very deserving of recommendation. In the end this app has already proven itself useful to me in production. And even though it isn't perfect, the continued development keeps getting it closer. Anyone interested in making or editing panoramic images should give this app a shot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original review for continuity to make sense: This is a very unique and very promising piece of software, with a lot of potential up ahead. However in its current state I cannot recommend it. It is extremely unstable, likes to crash a lot and guarantees the corruption of project files if it happens to crash during saving. And it also tends to corrupt the automatically generated recovery files, ultimately defeating their purpose. (Suggestion for devs: Never write directly into the project file while saving an existing project. Make it so that it saves into a temporary file first and only then after it's successfuly done allow it to overwrite the original project file.) My pc may perhaps not be the strongest, which could have contributed to the many problems, but I've run much more demanding software in the past with little to no issues, so I doubt it makes that big of an impact. Hopefully future versions will improve some of the stability issues. Stability aside, the tools themselves seem quite decent with a good variety of options. Although there seem to be no predefined presets for brushes so you pretty much have to make them yourself, and there also doesn't seem to be a way to rename layers (or if there is I haven't found it) I recommend keeping and eye on this app's development, as it still seems to be fairly active, giving me hope that it will continue to improve over time.

Wow. This is good. Anyone who dabbles in immersive previs will find this extremely useful. Normally I would keep a tool like this close to my chest. I'm making an exception in this case because its new and I believe this products success will contribute to my own.

I haven't seen a software that does what panopainter does, so that alone makes it worth a try if you're an illustrator, into 360 photos or videos. Facebook now has (since a while ago) the possibility to share those, so, it's an exploitable field for artists now. It would be unfair to compare it's controls and interface with photoshop or it's alternatives, but many of us have that as a standard and this is still a bit behind those as far as tools and settings go. But considering this software is doing something different with the 360, and the fact that it has a VR mode, is enough to overlook that. Besides, the developer seems to be constantly improving it. Only issue i had (in VR mode) was a minor displacement between the raycasted preview of where im gonna paint, and where the paint actually gets painted when painting near the horizon line. It painted a little above that. I wasn't making any masterpiece so i didn't really care but that could be annoying. Maybe the size of the brush also mattered, it was around 20% in size. On the rest of the canvas it seemed mostly accurate. The overlay with the settings is kinda awkward to use in VR mode, i hope the dev eventually comes up with a better alternative. But it gets the job done, it's not buggy by any means, just awkward. TLDR; if you're an illustrator it's worth the buy, it's also very cheap and only (incredibly) around 5mb in size!

I remember using this in the early stages of its production, and finally supported PanoPainter when it was released (and on sale) on Steam. This program has potentiality for having the accessibility to paint on a 360-degree canvas, and I will definitely use more in the future. Though I have a hunch that I will not use it as often as I want since it does not "feel like home". I came from other painting programs such as Krita and Photoshop, and the aspects that I really like in those programs just felt missing in PanoPainter. If any digital-painter came from any similar digital-programs as I did and want to transition to PanoPainter with those experiences, here are my first impressions as I try to familiarize myself... Though I feel they are small nit-picks to others, these are just the fundamental basics of painting navigation that I am used to for a long time: > Some keyboard shortcuts are fixed and cannot be customize into another key that I wished for. Holding "space-bar" button then click-and-drag/(or right-click and drag) will pan the canvas, though I want it to change it into another input. For me, I prefer using the middle click to move things around. [strike]> I can't rename layers.[/strike] Finally learned how, thanks dev! Even though I prefer to double click the actual layer name on the spot, as long as I can rename it somehow will help organize my stuff! What I haven't cover is: > VR, I don't have that. > Brushes. I heard you can import Photoshop brushes, I'll experiment that later on if I have the time. > Workflow. I haven't gone that far into the program since the critique I stated above is the "most basic yet missing" part and it infuriates me to do a work-around that I do not prefer. I'll update further since I'm new to this 360 stuff and excited to create something around that concept, but so far it isn't that welcoming as I hoped for 10 minutes in. Therefore I'll just have to adapt to it, which is a pain. If I am wrong in some parts or something I am not aware of, let me know. Because keep in mind that this review is very biased on my experiences based on other art programs and the 10 minutes time I spent in Panopainter. Take it a grain of salt.

it's the best software for panoramic\equirectangular grid\drawing if you want to try drawing 360 panoramic I suggest try drawing in 3 cubes 1 in front 1 to the right and 1 to the bottom there are photos online if you want to trace over try searching for "equirectangular" the only problem I have with the program is the way the program exports the files at the same folder you work at and there is no option for "browse" and "select folder" for the final export only moving the entire workspace

This is a really good 360 apps for painting, compare to drawing 360 in Photoshop, this apps really smooth. It'd be perfect if the developer upgrade some feature, like zooming, brush smoothing, more layer blending mode, renaming layers and maybe export to PSD so I could continue to paint the texture in Photoshop. But overall, this app is perfect for now. :)

tl;dr; Get if you're into 360 painting. If you're looking to make cube maps, it's not supported (yet?). Only tried on screen, can't talk about VR side as I've not tried it. Absolute gem of the Steam's software section. Provides you the tools to make a compelling panorama pictures currently for example into Facebook. At the moment it already feels good and provides extensive brush setting (and photoshop brush import option), there's left handed version which I as a leftie appreciate a whole bunch. You can animate the panoramas and generate heightmaps as well. It's basically a slightly limited painting program with 360 support. When it develops further though, the possibilities could be unlimited and me I'm personally eager to see if I could use this (eventually) to make a skybox or a cubemap somehow. + Feels good + Pen support + Unique concept + Photoshop brush import + Animation + Working UI (with considerate touches, though each click only closes 1 menu at a time can be bit frustrating) + Runs on Surface Pro (even on battery saving mode) + Responsive Dev +/- Importing pictures is possible, though it seems we can't import 3D objects yet. +/- Guides (though bit hard to position as there's no snapping, you have to wing it) +/- Exporting to panorama, but can't export to cubemap (or at least into 6 slice pictures where one could create a cubemap) - Some bugs that caused a lock up (I kept clicking same spot with polyline tool) - No touch support for rotating camera (you can finger paint though) - Can't tell exact value numbers in brush, grid etc. settings - Paint bucket fills the whole screen (e.g. selecting an area to fill would be nice) - Selection line is black which is invisible against black background That's most I could think of at the moment.

This is a fantastic piece of software, I gotta say. It definitely is an amazing new way to paint. I love how intuitive it feels and how easy it is to use. After about ten minutes of fiddling around with it, I was able to figure everything out. This is a definite must for any concept artist out there, especially those that love to paint environments. I'm pretty jazzed about all the things that I'm gonna do with this software. I've only played with it for 1.5 hrs so far, but I haven't had any issues with it as of this posting.

Got help from Panopainter for Crashes. [b] Revert to v. .2.2 [/b] New version crashes and won't run. Dev team response within a month, they're indy, so np. Pano kept my work safe. Super impressed. My email just got lost it seems. Forwarded it again and got a quick response. Panopainter is a dream come true, literally. The ability to make a 3D environment from a canvas is something I've been missing in my life. It's like getting to have a room of canvas and you get to paint all the walls. This is powerful, but easier to use with less flashy presets. GPU & cool brush settings like Black Ink. It's fast, powerful, and 5mb. For Tablet, you need to toggle on the brush sensitivity. Tools > Panels > Brush Settings. A child can pick up Panopainter and be creating in moments. That being said, You can put in a 3D skybox and use it to make games. Unbelievable. I'm used this 2 minutes and it already does what I want faster and better than anything I've demoed and could not afford. The time one can save... it can Story Board in 3D. If you're making an Adventure game, this can do single panel or 3D seemlessly. You could integrate 3D images into art / animation with it. I intend to utilize it for RPG Maker MV scene alignment, as I'm working with prerendered parallax. With importing this is more like Skyboxing in Blender or Bryce, but made easy. I've been wondering for years why this program didn't exist and here it is. Thank you Panopainter. I look forward to many happy hours creating new worlds.