Organic paint flowing, ink, watercolor

[musicstudio]

Hi Everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me figure this out, there have been a few posts by myself and others (see: https://studioartist.ning.com/forum/topics/717108:Topic:19901?commentId=717108%3AComment%3A19941 ) about animating paint and from very early on Dave Nagel's posts and presets have been a great start. I'm comfortable enough with SA4 to create organic-ish looking still images but when it comes to animating the paints in PASeqs over video or creating animations from still images invariably they look choppy or flat, like the paint is not really flowing and mixing on the video. I posted a video in the past for the closest I could find to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Kactglmnk While these look great they still do not flow the way paint really would , maybe it's beyond SA's capability or I'm dreaming, or should find another app to do this. I've tried all the suggestions I could find and put together a list of all the tips, would love a tutorial or if someone could point me in the right direction. 1) Fixed Color Ip Op to partially fade the previous frame (you could use a white or black fixed color and a mix of 30%). 2) add some slight feathering to a fade so the previous image dissipates slightly (geodesic recursive growth ip op is a good choice1) Fixed Color Ip Op to partially fade the previous frame (you could use a white or black fixed color and a mix of 30%). 2) add some slight feathering to a fade so the previous image dissipates slightly (geodesic recursive growth ip op is a good choice) 3) Texture Synthesizer - different ip ops like smart blur, adaptive filter, smart displace 4) configure the paint fill setup control panel so that the fill to popup was set to the canvas as opposed to the paint color 5) switched to a blend composite setting in the paint fill apply control panel, and then set the blend % to 10 6) very low blend settings which can generate a very nice smooth chalk like mark 7) to use a really low blend for paint fill apply 8) time particles today in the paint synthesizer to provide temporal continuity to paint strokes start point and or the actual paths themselves from frame to frame 9) PASeq to incorporate temporal continuity directly by smart use of overdrawing 10) turn on keyframe interpolation 11) turn off any randomization if you are using the vectorizer or ip ops, you want to make sure they are working off of a fixed random seed for each frame (you can adjust this in the secondary control panel in version 3.5 in the randomization subpanel, you want 'use seed' as opposed to 'unique' for the random parameter there) 12) You can modulate the brush size with a large number of modulators in the Brush Modulation control panel.) 3) The Texture Synthesizer try different ip ops like smart blur, adaptive filter, smart displace that can be configured to do this 4) configure the paint fill setup control panel so that the fill to popup was set to the canvas as opposed to the paint color 5) switched to a blend composite setting in the paint fill apply control panel, and then set the blend % to 10 6) very low blend settings which can generate a very nice smooth chalk like mark 7) to use a really low blend for paint fill apply 8) You can use time particles today in the paint synthesizer to provide temporal continuity to paint strokes start point and or the actual paths themselves from frame to frame 9) PASeq to incorporate temporal continuity directly by smart use of overdrawing 10) turn on keyframe interpolation 11) turn off any randomization 12) You can modulate the brush size with a large number of modulators in the Brush Modulation control panel. 13) lower key frame rate to 8 or 10 FPS 14) Image Ops - Use same random number seed (ip op secondary randomization control panel ) 15) You can use the Mix control to mix in some of the previous output frame as a way of introducing some temporal continuity from frame to frame.

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[Synthetik]

Here's a paint animation example i grabbed from the moving art gallery on the Synthetik website at posted to the video section of the forum. The ning compression eats a lot of the fine detail in the video but you can see the paint dripping and mixing near the end of the animation. Is this the kind of thing you are looking to achieve?

This example was pretty simple. It was just a simple PASeq that uses the paint synthesizer. The trick to generating this kind of thing is to overdraw on your previous output frame (as opposed to erasing it each frame). You can start the PASeq off with a water drip preset and then paint on top of the drip modified canvas with a second action step.

[Victor Ingrassia]

"The ning compression eats a lot of the fine detail in the video but"...

Hi John... Glad to see you've switched to VIMEO for your upload/compression. NING's quality is pretty much what pushed me to Vimeo.

[Synthetik]

Yes, vimeo is a thousand times better. I would really recommend it for people who want to post videos to the forum here. My first example was at 24 frames per second, and the ning compression reduced the frame rate in a way that makes the animation jerky, so it wasn't even useable. That was what drove me to try vimeo.

[Laurence Zankowski]

I post my old stuff there, will now post my vids there from SA4, and then link to them some how.
laurence

[Synthetik]

Here's a quick example i threw together in a hurry. It shows off paint flowing and wet mixing in a rough abstract paint style. Is this the kind of thing you are looking for?

[Synthetik]

Here's another movie example using this same PASeq approach.

The PASeq looks like this.

I start off by clearing the canvas to white for the first frame only.

I wet and drip the canvas using the first 2 auto paint steps.

I run 2 time particle paint steps that paint in the video with flowing paint.

I set the selection to the source frame. I then very slightly warp the painted canvas with the source to help define the facial features a little bit.

I then add a small mix amount of gradient lighting and 2 sharpening steps (blur ip op with an edge composite). I then run the image compressor with a conservative setting.


So, what did i do with the above steps. I built temporal continuity in the animation by modifying a previously drawn frame and then paint on top of the modified canvas. By modification i mean that i softened the last output frame with water and dripped some water on it as well. I then used time particles in the paint synthesizer to generate the flowing paint effect. it's a very generic set of time particle parameters, nothing elaborate. I then do some cleanup and enhancement at the end to pump up the video a little.

Now, i went through several different iterations to build this PASeq. I worked to put together the time particle paint i was interested in using first. The i added the water effects. Then i added the selection warp enhancement. Then i added what for me is a pretty typical cleanup pass at the end of the PASeq.

Building up an effect step by step is a good approach. You don't have to do everything in your first pass at building a PASeq. Try to get one aspect of the effect working first. Then you can enhance it to make it more visually sophisticated.

[Synthetik]

Here's another example i tossed together quickly. I was trying to go for a watercolor kind of paint animation effect, again with some flow and mixing going on over time.

The PASeq for this effect looks like this.

The approach taken here is a little different than the first example i posted, because i'm using image operations to add detail and then a combination of other image operations and paint synthesizer presets to then create the wet flow and mixing.

I start off by setting the canvas to white for the first frame only.

I then slightly fade the canvas to white using the Fixed Color ip op with a low mix setting.

I then drip some water on the canvas using the paint synthesizer.

I then use the Geodesic Warper ip op to add some watery diffusion.

I then use the Smart Contrast ip op to add source frame detail by min compositing the effect output onto the canvas.

I then use the 2 Blur steps with edge compositing to sharpen the canvas a little.

I then use the Colorize ip op to recolor the canvas to better match the original source coloring.

I then use a conservative setting for the image compressor to pump up the image a little.


Again, i started with a rough idea of what i wanted to achieve with the effect, to simulate a water color style. I wanted to have fairly defined edges that then wet mixed and flowed into the canvas like the paint had been applied with a defined brush to wet paper. SO i first worked out the smart contrast ip op settings i wanted to use, then i added the water paint preset and the additional simulated water effect using the geodesic warper ip op. Then i added the fade at the beginning to avoid too much color building up over time. Then i added the cleanup stages at the end.

The original version of this had brightly saturated colors, which is a cool effect. but i wanted something more subdued that better matched the original image. So i added the colorize ip op step last to achieve that.

Again, the approach i took generates temporal continuity from frame to frame. We achieved this by modifying a previously drawn frame and then overdrawing on top of the modified frame image.


For both of these examples, my original frame rate was a little higher than i wanted for the final painted effect. For the first paint animation example, i slowed things down by skipping input frames and then duplicating frames on output to end up with the same fast frame rate for the output but a visual perception of slower paint movement due to frames being duplicated. You can do this in the movie preferences. I skipped 1 source frame (means it uses every other frame) and duplicated 1 extra output frame (means each output frame is output twice).

For the water color example i just picked a slower fixed frame rate for the output.

[Jean Detheux]

John,

One question: how, in a PASeq with Sequential KeyFraming, do you set up the canvas to white (or any other source) "for the first frame only?"
Is that "black" square to the right ot the first step some kind of muting of the first action so that the "setting the canvas to white" no longer applies after that first instance?

[Synthetik]

If you hold down the m key and then option click a keyframe cell you will record a mute keyframe. That action step is then muted until the next valid keyframe for that action step. When an action step is muted it doesn't playback.

You often run into situations where you want to do something to the canvas initially for the first frame to set it up a certain way, but then you want to skip those steps for subsequent frames. Mute keyframes are great for setting this up.

[Jean Detheux]

Thanks John,
I must have missed that feature when it was introduced.
Precious stuff.
Say I have this 300 frames PASeq. I mute step 1 after one frame, how do I revive the action later on (like "on" for frame one, muted from 2 to 100, "on" again from frames 100 to 300)?