MSG paintbrush puzzled

Replies

Synthetik July 24, 2009 at 11:22am

If you want to zip compress the preset and post it here i can take a look at it. I don't see why changing the pen mode would change the msg preset embedded in the paint preset, i don't think that is even possible. The a simple texture default startup current preset would switch from active to edited when you loaded a paint preset that had msg embedded in it. if you had the msg advanced editor up then you would see that update to reflect the change.

Any paint synthesizer preset that uses msg internal to it is using whatever is the current msg settings. There's an option in the paint synth misc control panel that you can use to save the msg information in the paint preset or not.

I'll try to get a generic msg in paint presets tip up later today.
- Synthetik > Synthetik July 24, 2009 at 2:15pm
  
  Here's a tip on using MSG as a live source brush in the paint synthesizer.
  
  Here's an article on MSG path start generators in the paint synthesizer.
  
  Here's an article on MSG based time particles in the paint synthesizer.
  
  Here's another article on MSG live source brushes in the paint synthesizer.
  
  Here's an article on painting with MSG derived chaotic attractors in the paint synthesizer.
- Synthetik > Synthetik July 24, 2009 at 3:49pm
  
  Here's a new overview tip that provides a broad overview of what you could do with MSG to extend or customize the paint synthesizer.
Dev Dodd July 29, 2009 at 4:05am

Puzzle solved. The preset isn't switching away as I had thought. It is 'a simple preset' MSG, and it's astounding the radical difference in its appearance & behavior from the other pen settings. I did save my preset for this one when it was tweaked but it saved to somewhere unknown [on my Mac] and I forgot what I named it. This also points to how valuable the 'preset info' is/can be.
The articles and tips you referred me to are very helpful, thank you. I've only dabbled in this area a little (MSGs in PBs that is) and this is like an awesome new Area 51 opening up.

A certain thought on presets in general. Has the notion of a preset 'scrubber' or 'profiler' been entertained? I suspect that many of the presets that I have created have extraneous settings to them, settings that have nothing to do with the paintbrushes appearances and behaviors (the ones it was saved for, at any rate), but settings that are lurking in there just waiting to throw me a curveball in the middle of my flow. In other words, do you think it would be useful or even possible to build into SA a way to initiate an automatic examination to 'purify' the preset, to eliminate any unecessary settings and to distill and keep only the settings essential to the desired appearance? Does this make much sense, or do you imagine this would this make much if any difference?
- Synthetik > Dev Dodd July 29, 2009 at 9:46am
  
  The scrubber is an interesting idea. Everybody who works with preset randomization or evolution runs into this, since it's very easy to generate really weird settings when doing preset mutation or morphing. Actually implementing it might be a little challenging. But i will think about it. maybe there's a way to make it flag you about certain standard inconsistencies.
  - liveart > Synthetik July 29, 2009 at 12:20pm
    
    Personally I'd rather the system were smart enough to either fill in or zero out the extraneous settings, rather than interrupting me with alerts--sounds a little too Vista for me. I am not sure what would be truly extraneous as I have made some interesting discoveries with "magical accidents" as one might call them. I use a pretty good mix of directed evolution and straight preset building. The "errors" in the mutations are always opportunities to learn.
    
    That said I can see a use for cleaning out settings that will cause crashes or nullify a preset's behaviour.
    - Synthetik > liveart July 29, 2009 at 6:16pm
      
      I tend to use mingle evolution for paint presets more than morph or interpolation evolution to avoid really weird intermediate settings. But you do bring up a good point about magic sometimes happening with weird settings you would not normally use.
      
      That's even more true with MSG evolution. Many really interesting or magical MSG presets and the associated imagery would never be created if you had to start from scratch and built them by hand. There are some MSg macro edits available that do some intelligent cleanup, like auto-removal of recursive IO connections.
  - a73x15 > Synthetik August 8, 2009 at 8:19am
    
    how do i work with preset randomization or evolution in sa4.0?
    (like in sa3.5 "global evolution" for paint synthesizer)
    i.ve looked every where i can't find it!!
    - M A X > a73x15 August 8, 2009 at 9:36am
      
      this is for generating new paint-presets: select the presets you want to randomize or mingle and record it into the patchmemory 1-4, then go the Help-Menu: Paint Synthesizer Evolution, click on the black triangles to get results
      - a73x15 > M A X August 8, 2009 at 9:55am
        
        thanks max,
        sorry for this (other) idiotic question but
        HOW DO I RECORD THE PRESET IN THE PATCHMEMORY (1-2-3-4) ?
        also, would you like to be my friendly friend?