I've no idea if a script like this exists, and I was too lazy to search, so I wrote one.

It's still very crude, I haven't had the time to polish it up, and it has some minor glitches - like the order of the layers won't be entirely correct if there's more than one layer in the image, but other than that it works ok.

Now, what it does is, basically: it takes the current layer, and makes X rotated copies of it, so that the layer is rotated a full 360 - in other words, if you select 36 layers, they are stepped at 10 degrees, and so on.

What is it useful for? Of course for making directional brushes! Manually copying and rotating a 100 (the maximum allowed by the .gih format) copies of a layer is very tiresome, so if you want to make cool brushes that follow the direction of the cursor, this is the way to do it.

Now, like I said, it's still at development phase, and I haven't had the time to polish it up (if someone wants to do it, be my guest, otherwise I'll get to it when I have the chance) so there's still a glitch in the layer ordering if you have more than one layers in the image. It's not a big glitch and the script is still useful.

Those who have made their own brushes know that colourless brushes need to be saved as a grayscale image, and transparency is marked by white colour (ie. the value channel is inverted and used as alpha for the brush) so the script automatically fills any transparent areas of the copies with white, if the image is a grayscale image. If it's an RGB image, it won't do that, since multicolour brushes are handled differently.

Anyway, I mainly wrote this script for myself, but then I thought others might find it useful too, so here it is:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/2/7/2 ... rotator.py

It installs in filter/distorts.

small example

RobA has something similar in scheme:

http://registry.gimp.org/node/583

thanks for sharing DD.....

dd it's good to see you again!
How have you been?

Thanks for the cool script by the way.
I can't use it in Gimp-2.6 but it works in 2.7.3

Cheers!

I gave your plug-in a try. I also have RobA's so now I have two rotator brush-makers.

It works great, dd.

It's a chain link. Wish I knew how t make them actually linked inside of each other.

Thanks dd; have RobA's script, but gave your plugin a try; like the barbed wire brush by the way.

It would probably be appreciated if the script saved the user's original foreground color (using gimp-context-push/-pop).

Also, I don't think it matters that you perform a 'gimp-selection-layer-alpha' because the Python-fu fill() method does not honor the selection. You should double-check this as I haven't delved too deeply into Python (nor do I intend to), but I believe the fill method corresponds to "pdb.gimp-drawable-fill()" and not "pdb.gimp-edit-fill()" (and if you were to use the "pdb.gimp-edit-fill()" method then the result probably would not be what you'd want anyway).

I think Python's drawable.fill() method might potentially cause problems with the UNDOability of certain scripts because 'gimp-drawable-fill' is not UNDOable. This is not (to my understanding) a problem for your script because you are using it on a layer that your script creates from scratch, but it would be a problem if the fill() method were used on an existing layer. To be honest, I don't understand why Python-fu offers it as a method given its limitations and intended purpose (and yet 'gimp-edit-fill' is not available ).

The secret to this is making the linking portion of the chain the core of the image. I guess it would be worth a shot to see if it would actually work. Not sure if it will.

I understand what you mean but they don't line up on a curve. A single brush on a straight line works fine.

Have you seen this chain brush:
Gimp Chain Brush by Chrisdesign
It isn't a flat chain, but...

Ah! Thanks bkh! I think the secret that makes it work is the flat turned link. Need to work with that in mind.

Now I am curious as to how a stroked path would treat the chain (probably the same as the animation).

I made an ellipse and saved it to path. That chain is the result of that stroked path.

Thanks for that link bkh; even left Chris a comment at Deviant. Fantastic approach to creating the chain; trying to create alternating interlinks as a brush is next too impossible though, but this chain's still fantastic.

Chris has quite a few interesting animated brushes in his gallery:
GIMP Brushes by Chrisdesign

thanks for sharing bkh1914. I nabbed 6 of them.

hahaha, I love Follow the Ant!

yah cute huh..... Maybe I will paint them red so they will bite.

Thanks. Been a bit busy with rl things (summer and everything). I'll try to visit more often



That's weird, because I use 2.6 - are you getting any error messages?