Hello everyone. This isn't really game-development-related, but I'd like your opinion on this as software developers as well as users.

Some time ago I worked for a good while on a program, "Curver" I called it, which focuses on implementing a natural workflow for working with line art. Then I put it on hold in favor of other projects and some real life circumstances. Anyway, now I'm at the stage of finding a project to start/resume. With financial interest in mind, do you think this project has potential? What to add to it without complicating it too much? Would it generate a good user base?

Basically, what are your thoughts? Thanks in advance for any input

It seems really cool, but it might be easier to sell as a adobe photoshop/illustrator plugin rather than a dedicated piece of software.

...of course that would probably require a lot of extra development...

At the time I started working on it, I could not find software which implemented a similar workflow. Toon Boom does seem like a much more complete package. I can't help but feel that my tool is now redundant. Also, as a solo programmer, I feel like aiming for completeness and richness rather than specificity may not be the best strategy.

I wouldn't say its redundant. Looks really nice and there is room in the world for more than one line-drawing package. Just look at all the 3D modellers out there.

I'd keep this alive personally. Good work.

I appreciate everyone's input, although I'm still uncertain whether to go on with it or find something more promising to work on :s

haegarr

Is it technologically based on dense polylines or piecewise curve fitting?

Dense polylines, though the application simplifies and re-tesselates them on the fly. The vertices are converted on the CPU into a triangle strip and sent to the GPU, where a shader does some calculations to perform anti-aliasing, as well as some width modifications to avoid weird-looking corners.

What about gap closing?

Vertices are nodes in a linked list, so closing a curve is a matter of linking the last vertex to the first.

Does it support directly or indirectly faces or just strokes?

Closed curves (not shown in the video) can be filled. The application uses hardware stencil operations and uses the curve's vertices to draw the fill shape.

Does it support planar maps or something alike?

Shapes and curves can be shaded in many ways. There is even a material editor very similar to that in the Unreal Engine to allow users to create all sorts of shaders to use with the curves and shapes.

About extending it... I've been thinking about that, but in the end I don't want to try to compete with the myriad of painting applications out there. So I think it would be wise of me to define a manageable set of features and focus on those, instead of trying to create another painting/animation/photo-manipulation/sketching program. I think that maybe if I design it to solve a particular problem (unwieldy line-art workflows) and price it accordingly, then maybe it would be successful. But like I said before, I'm still uncertain. I don't want to spend months working on it and then failing.