Movie brush

[Saša S]

Hi John,

I'm using attached paint preset for drawing mosaic and not always satisfied how SA selects images to represent an area of the source image.

I'm using 1D Frame mod RGB mapping in Brush Source panel as the only option that roughly does what I want. But there are almost 100 frames in the movie and SA only uses small part of them. Changing MB Attribute Index doesn't make any difference. 2D MB indexing also didn't make sense (I've checked all possible combination)

Are there controls to make SA use various frames with similar color range and/or orient/texture for both automatic and pen drawing.

Cheers!

Sasa

time-120.mov

time.paint

[Saša S]

or maybe there is a hack

how do i need to adjust the source image so the paint preset uses more frames?

[Synthetik]

Expanding the dynamic range of the source image will cause it to use more frames.

And adding more frames to the movie that have more diverse coloring helps as well. keep in mind that the frame color is averaged over the entire movie frame.

As i mentioned above, a totally different approach is to use sequential or random frame indexing, and to colorize the movie frames on the fly using image processing brush load functions. Then you will use all of the frames.

[Synthetik]

MB 1D Frame Mod determines how the frames will be indexed. If you use RGB Mapping, then it chooses the frame with an average color that best matches the current source color. Depending on the particular source image you are using, and the collection of images in the individual frames of the movie file, it's possible that only a few of the movie frames will be the closest color match for most of the source image.

There are 2 solutions for that. Increase the diversity of the coloring of the individual frame images in the movie brush. Or use a different frame indexing method, and use colorization to recolorize the images to match the source image. Here's a tip on colorization.

MB Attribute Index isn't going to affect RGB Mapping for the Frame Mod. Because theta Frame Mod option doesn't care about the index ordering. So that's why you didn't see any change for that particular Frame mod option.

If you use a Frame Mod option that does care about the frame index ordering, then the Attribute Index adjustment will affect the mapping. So if you use pressure Frame Mod, and you set the Attribute Index to Luminance or Orientation, then as you press harder you will cycle through luminance or orientation index mapped images (as opposed to just sequentially indexing through the movie frames). We don't currently have frame texture as an attribute index option, but we could add it. We do have source texture as a Frame Mod option.

[Saša S]

Thanks John,

colorization is that what I need to avoid in this project.

but pressure and luminance does work 

[Synthetik]

I'll look into adding some alternative color mapping options for movie brushes. I know that in the past you have used movie frames that are object images on solid color backgrounds. If you average the entire image to do a color match you might not necessarily get what you really want to match to. Same goes for alpha matted movie frames when building irregular shaped photo mosaics. There are some additional features we could add to improve the frame mapping in those kinds of situations.

[Saša S]

Many thanks,

Sounds very good to me

Any idea when to expect this new functionality?

[Saša S]

It would be great to have Color (Inv Color) option in MB Attribute index

what additional features do you have in mind?

Can't wait for this functionality... Willing to pay for pre-release

Cheers

Sasa

[Synthetik]

We added an AlphaOn option to the code for the next version of Studio Artist so that attributes are only calculated where the frame alpha channel is full on if this option is turned on. So this is useful for alpha matted frames (movies with embedded alpha channels for irregular object photo mosaics), because it removes the pixels associated with the alpha matted out background (usually a flat color) from being used when computing attributes for frame mapping.

[Saša S]

Hi John, I think I've already asked but can't find your answer on this forum

Let's say I'm drawing with a movie brush and realize I need to add/remove/replace brush frames (or even create a new brush) to adequately represent my source image.

The ideal situation would be to have a folder with images-frames for currently used brush, so I could add/remove images and SA autoupdates the brush. (instead of quitting paiting, running create movie from image action, and load everything back)

Can't remember what was your suggestion.

Thanks

Sasa

[Synthetik]

You coud use Quicktime Player pro to add additional frames to an existing movie file. Or to delete frames out of a movie file.

If you do this, you will need to reload the paint preset that references the movie brush.