image hose type tool?

[Eric]

I was wandering if it's possible to make a brush for manual use sort of like painter's image hose for manual use with the settings... a tool that would pull from a chosen set of gray-scale images randomly, and spray them out in the chosen color(s). I already know color variance is possible and I assume rotation and jitter variance would be possible.  It'd have to have a pretty slow flow/repeat rate too.  I was thinking about making some brushes like that for foliage, trees, rocks, grass... that kind of tedious repetitive stuff.  I don't know how many manual painter's use Studio Artist, but the flexibility of the tools interest me.

I'm still pretty new, so I apologize if my ignorance is showing through. 

Anyhow, thanks for taking a look :)

[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

The analogy in Studio Artist would be to use a movie brush. Or a movie background texture.

...

A movie brush is a brush source made from a quicktime movie file. So you can put whatever images you would like to put in the 'image hose' into frames in the movie file. You can then choose either 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional frame indexing to dynamically modulate the movie frame being used as the brush when you are painting.

The normal paint synthesizer brush modulation controls still apply. So you can modulate the size and rotation of the movie brush frames using the Brush Modulation control panel settings.

If you want to use objects in your individual images that have an alpha mask, you can build a movie file with an embedded alpha channel. And use the movie brush along with the source alpha brush type. So then the alpha mask associated with each individual movie frame will also be associated into the brush. So you can paint with the RGB pixels of the movie frame, and use the alpha channel of the movie frame to be the blend brush.

...

Here's a simple tip on making a movie brush.

Here's a link to a tutorial group discussion that covers masked movie brushes as well as photo mosaics.

Here's a link to a series of movie brush posts on the studio artist effects blog.

[Eric]

Not to sound like an idiot here, but I've tried following steps as best I can from the tips, and I'm not getting a working Movie brush from my efforts... I'm not sure if it's a difference between mac and windows... between 3.5 and 4... Or maybe I'm just missing something since I'm still unfamiliar with the advanced features of SA4.

When I try to "Record setting the Canvas background to the Source Image by dragging
the source image to the canvas. You should see an Action step
appear in the Paint Action Sequence list titled “Set Canvas : Source
Image”. Turn off Paint Action Recording.", no action step appears... Also, am I supposed to start with one of the images being used to build the brush as the source image, or just whatever image I want to use the movie brush on?

So, assuming I've just opened SA4 with no canvas... what do I need to do? I'm trying to use a folder of png's with transparent backgrounds to make the movie brush. Sorry for having to ask, maybe my blood-sugar is low or something.

[liveart]

I have not tried .png files with SA. but presuming that they work. your first step to creating a movie brush is to create a movie. You want to make a movie from a folder of images, so what you want to do is make a Paint Action Sequence that simply moves the source image to the canvas.

click on the record check box in the paint action sequence panel. GO to the erase button and select "erase to source image."  

you will note that the paseq now has a recorded step that step is "set canvas to source."

you can turn of the record button now. you are done, the paseq will now bring the source image to the canvas.

the next step in making your movie file is to go under the ACTION menu and select Process with Paint Actin sequence :: image to movie.

when you select that you will get a dialog asking you which folder of images SA should reference.

I think you can figure out the rest. 

[Eric]

I seem to have an error then... PASeq doesn't seem to record anything, or I'm missing some basic initial step to get it to work... The record check-box is selected, but no recorded actions appear.  Sorry to be a pain about something I assume is pretty basic... I will try reinstalling SA4, but please do add anything else you might have to say.  I don't usually have such a hard time figuring these things out.

[liveart]

try using the attached PASeq.

[Eric]

okay... so, reinstalling indeed seemed to fix the issue of PASeq not recording actions, and I have it loading the sequence of images, but when the save dialogue pops up, there's no file type selected and therefore no file extension. The drop down for File type contains only "All Files (*.*)"  So, it saves, but with no extension... Of course windows then prompts me to choose a program to open the extension-less file file with... because SA4 is set to open after creation... and that's where I end up... I need to sleep though, before I can think clearly again :)

Thanks for being willing to help so far, hopefully I'll work it out after some sleep :)

[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

If you are on windows, save the movie as a 'mov' file extension.

If you are mac, it doesn't matter, you can choose to do that or not.

I would suggest opening the movie files with the Quicktime Player application.

If you don't want the movies to open after you finish rendering them, you can set the 'Option When Finished movie preference (main preference dialog, movie tab) to None.

[Eric]

okay... got the movie compiled, thank you for your willingness to help.  I'm sure it feels tedious sometimes when you know the program so well.

[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

Not sure if you are on a mac or windows.

If you are on a mac, i prefer the quicktime player 7 as opposed to the newer but less functional quicktime player x app for playing movies.

If you are on windows, 4.04 outputs a rendered movie file as 2 separate files, which mirror the 2 separate mac resource and data forks. 

We modified this in 4.05 to just output one file that is a platform independent data fork movie file.

Mac files are actually2 separate files internally (data and resource forks), but to a user they appear to be just one file.

[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

Eric, The contents of the paint action sequence palette have vertical splitter controls to allow you to reposition them. So you can hide the contents from view. This is probably what is happening.

Go to the paint action sequence window. Mouse down on the far right side of the window where there should be a vertical splitter control and pull it left. The list contents of the PASeq window should pull into view.

[Eric]

Well, it wasn't that I couldn't see the panel. I did have "rec" checked after-all, but where the tips showed that the action would be recorded... nothing was being populated... just a blank space.  reinstalling did fix that issue, so perhaps something got corrupted or I inadvertently did something that broke the functionality somehow.

I believe you are describing what I saw in one of the video tutorials, and that was not the issue. I had the palettes arranged vertically along the side, not with tabs along the bottom.  What I was experiencing was where it should be show recorded actions in PASeq under the columns "Name", "Status" and "Layer"  was blank and showed nothing after checking the "rec" box and erasing the canvas to source.

It is working now though, so it's not a problem anymore.

[Eric]

I'd be using PSD's instead of png's except that Corel Painter 12 does a poor job of saving PSD files with transparency. I haven't had the spare $1000, or whatever it's costing these days to buy photoshop :/