Procreate 5.2 Beta Update
I am showing you Procreate 5.2 Beta. The Beta version will not be the real Procreate 5.2 version that you can download this year. I am in the Beta team of Procreate so I can test out this version on stability and any bugs that might occur. This is still the Private Beta, but I asked Savage Interactive for permission to show you what is coming. This has been a highly anticipated update that started 6 moments ago. You can follow Procreate on all the Socials. There they show you some teasers of what is coming. In this video I will give you an overview of all the new features.
In the next videos I will go more in depth to all of the features so subscribe if you haven’t already and hit that notification bell, so that you don’t miss a video.
So what is coming to Procreate 5.2?
3D Painting
The most important update is painting on 3D objects. You now can import OBJ- and USD models into Procreate and paint on them with all the brushes, Image Filters, QuickShape and even import photos. When you open Procreate 5.2 you can import a default Modelpack and start playing around with the 8 models. You can move around the object while you are painting. You can also select parts of the object and paint them separately.
3D Transform
You can also use the Transform Tool to transform your 3D painting on the model. In Automatic you can make it bigger, rotate it and place it on the object.
Flip the image Vertical and Horizontal. Rotate it in 45 degrees increments. Increase or decrease the Projection Depth of the picture and wrap it around your object. In Advanced you can change the Angle of the projection. The Height and width. And you can change the Interpolation to Nearest Neighbour, Bilinear or Bicubic. Press reset to reset the image.
Lighting Studio
In Actions there is a new 3D section. You can show the 2D Texture of the model, The Paint through Mesh and Edit lighting & environment. Here you can change the lighting of the object by adding up to 4 light sources. You can change the color of the lights and move them around the object. There are also 11 default Environments you can choose from.
View in AR
You can also view the model you just painted in AR. You can increase the size of the model and view it from all angles when you move around your iPad.
Material Brushes
Painting in 3D requires some new brushes that react to light and materials. Savage has added new filters to the Brushes Menu. Materials. In Materials you can choose the Metallic Source, You can increase the amount of Metallic the brush will reflect. Also the roughness of the material. It all the depends on what part of the model you want to paint. Does it absorb light, or reflect light? In Materials you can choose your material.
New Material BrushSet
In Procreate 5.2 there is a new BrushSet called Materials. They are made for painting on the 3D models. There are 17 Brushes in this Brushset with some interesting names. In the next video I will test out all of these brushes and see what they do.
3D Animated Export
You can export your 3D model as a Procreate file, but also as USDZ or OBJ format. Then you can import the 3D model with your painted mesh. You can also export the 3D model as an animation. As an Animated GIF, Animated PNG, Animated MP4 or Animated HEVC. Procreate has two ways for exporting the 3D Model. Animated rotate and Animated swing. You can select the size of your video from 720p up to 4K. And you can adjust The Animation duration, Zoom distance and the Ease of the animation. You also have the option to export the animation with a Transparant Background.
Stroke Stabilisation
In Brushes there is now a dedicated Stabilisation tab. You can still adjust the StreamLine amount. But with Stabilisation you have even more control over the stabilisation of your strokes. You can also apply stabilisation for all brushes. When you go to Actions and then Prefs, select Pressure and Smoothing. You can adjust the Stabilisation Motion Filtering and Motion Filtering Expression for all the brushes you use. You can also use this together with the stabilisation of single brushes.
Motion Filtering
Motion filtering does the same thing but is more for people who less control over the motion of their hand. With Motion Filtering you can filter out the motion. You can filter out the Amount and Expression of the way you draw. Even if you have a steady hand this is is an interesting filter where you can draw straight line or curves without using QuickShape.
Page Assist
In Actions/Canvas is a new option, Page Assist. When you Toggle it on you can create a canvas with multiple pages. It works the same as Animation Assist, but now your layers are separate pages. You can export them as a PDF file with multiple pages. But you can also import existing PDF’s in Procreate and go through them in Procreate 5.2.
Recent Brushes
Your last eight brushes you recently used are now saved at the top of the Brush Library in Recent. You can also Pin your favourite brush by swiping from right to left. Tap on Pin to Pin the brush. Press on Clear if your want to clear the brush from Recent. Tap on Find to find out in which BrushSet the brush is assigned to.
Brush Size Memory
With Brush Size Memory you can save up to 4 marks on every brush. When you Adjust the size or Opacity of your brush you see a + sign. Adjust the size of opacity with your finger and then tap on the + sign. It creates a mark on the slider. When you have several marks and slide to a different mark it magnetically snaps to the mark. You can use Brush Size Memory to Brushes, Smudge and Erase.
Improved Adjustments
The Adjustment you can make to a layer are now improved. Now you can select a layer and apply an effect on the whole layer and then make extra adjustments with your Apple Pencil and also apply a different amount of the effect. Now the menu of Layer and Pencil is on top of the screen.
New Color Cards
In the color Menu there is an extra section in the Palettes tab: Cards. Cards big color cards with names in them. All of your Palettes are also available as cards. If you make a custom Palette it also will be a color card. Every card is automatically named, but you can also change the name of a color. If you have some colors of a logo or character, you can now name them.
Color Description Notifications
When you now select a color from the canvas the colours are named on top of the screen. When you hover over the canvas, you can see the Color Description Notifications. You need to go to the settings on your iPad and Procreate 5.2 to activate it.
Single Touch Gestures Companion
When you are in the Settings of Procreate 5.2 you can also toggle on the Single Touch Gesture Companion. A new window will pop-up on you canvas with shortcuts to: Undo, Redo, Zoom, Move and Fit Canvas.
Feedback Sounds
In the settings you can also toggle on Feedback Sounds. I already had it on. You hear feedback sounds when you change the buttons on the top UI. In Adjustments with the filters you hear an increase in sound when you adjust the sliders. When you save an image you hear a bell ting sound and when you save it it sounds like sending a mail.
Customizable Onion Skin Colors
The only improvement to Animation Assist is Customizable Onion Skin Colors.
Now you can customise the onion skin colours. Tap on settings in the timeline bar and then tap on Onion Skin colours. You will get a color window pop-up where you can select the color for the frame before and the frame after.
iPadOs 15 memory updates
iPad Pros with 6 GB of RAM can now take advantage of the extra memory and create more layers and bigger resolutions. You need to install iPadOS 15 to use the extra memory. For instance on my iPad 12.9 inch from 2018 an animation at 1080 p has 253 layers. When you have an iPad Pro with the M1 chip with 1TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM. You will have 902 layers to work with. And you can create canvas size up to 16k by 8k.
There are more little features coming to Procreate 5.2, but I was not able to test them yet in this Beta version. I will make more videos about the updates.
When will Procreate 5.2 become available?
That is hard to tell. In a life stream the CEO of Savage answered the question.
We hope to get it out this year, but the 3D stuff is totally new for us
They want to have a stable app that works on all iPad’s that is why we, the Beta testers, are helping them to make the best app possible.