Paper Textures

[liveart]

As always in SA there are many roads to Rhodes.

A while back I posted a few examples of MSG presets that added paper and canvas like textures to a "finished" image. (really you can apply them anytime, but I mean that it is an after process vs a concurrent to the paint process). There are other ways to "paint with texture" in Studio Artist.

This post will explain a method that is somewhat similar to using paper textures in Painter.

I have attached an image file which points to the panels and adjustments. Opening that file will make it easier to follow along.

To make a texture part of the process of painting such that when one drags the paint across the "surface" a texture is revealed, first requires that you have a texture.

In SA in the paint preset editor there is a panel for background texture. For the method I am describing you head there. Once there you will see that there are many ways to create a texture. For the presets that I am attaching all use the procedural option. But one could just as easily use the texture synthesizer or image based options found in the drop down.

In the visual guide I have circled the key adjustments. Start by choosing the Alg(orithm). Then adjust the bias and gain, then adjust the size, then check the orientation and directionality. The effects of adjusting these settings will show in the little preview window in the lower right.

Once you have your texture, you have to add it to the paint preset. Head to the paint fill set up panel. in the "fill from mod" menu choose "add back texture".

One can to this to most of the paints in SA. Some (water colors in particular) will already be using this modulation to create a different effect. But one should be able to create a rather large selection and variation of paint presets that will "paint revealing a background texture."

I have attached a few presets to get you started and to examine. This is not intended to be an exhaustive collection. For starters, I only used the procedural option and only did an oil a chalk and a wet. Further, you might want to adjust the Paint color source on many of these presets as I have them set for max saturation vs the regular "color" setting. Hey its what I was doing at the time.

I should state that this technique will work for "autodraw" presets but will be much better with hand control of the pressure and stroke direction. The background texture as I have these presets set up does not vary with brush size, but if you want you could add such a modulation.

Further many of Craig's hand presets like the charcoal and crayon have a texture built into the "nib".
One can use the technique described here to create a texture under these, no problem. But in many cases it might just seem redundant.

In general I am hoping that these presets and this post will encourage you to explore, find new techniques and come back and share them with (me) us.

As to the water color paints. This technique will work for some more or less well. But in an earlier post I discussed a method of using a displacement layer. I believe such a technique would be a better path for emulating texture underneath a watercolor.

Have fun. Please post any interesting mods or new presets you might make as a result of using these to the preset sharing forum.

Thanks.

Oh yes one last thing.. these presets are v4. They may or may not work in 3.5. But the technique will work just fine.

[liveart]

I modified the presets a bit. and added a few more. If you have v4 you can unzip this file and then place the folder inside the favorite folder which is inside the presets folder. Once you do that you can then head to the main preferences menu and set the Gallery Show to run from the "cur fav" or current favorites folder. I recommend setting the number of strokes to 100. This should be enough to see the texture without taking forever on each.

Run the gallery show from the actions menu. This will allow you to watch the various presets in action. You can then decide to keep or chuck them as you desire.

[Dee Flouton]

Running the gallery show as suggested paints strokes from each preset one on top of another in the same layer, which, I have found, can have a white, black or colored background (rather odd and inconsistent, no?). The continuous painting, with a few seconds interval between each preset, quickly becomes muddied and it is harder to distinguish the strokes and what they should look like because they are laid one atop the other. Is there any way to run a continuous gallery show that wipes the canvas clean in between preset examples, or does one have to resort to stopping and starting the show by using the action button, then stopping, erasing the canvas, and then activating the next preset, as I found I had to do in order to "clearly see" the effects of each preset?
Also when running them, the strokes were all dark brown or black, unlike the pictured icon--but I assume that has to do with editing the parameters of paint apply, fill, etc., right?

[johndalton]

If you are running a gallery how based on presets they are going to overdraw on the previous cycle's output as opposed to resetting the canvas to some default and then drawing when the next cycle starts.

You can set something up to do what you want with a little effort. Right now you'd have to build PASeq's that reset the background to whatever you wanted and then did the painting with the paint presets you are interested in using. So you'd put those PASeqs in a favorites folder and then run the gallery show using the PASeq presets (as opposed to using the paint presets directly).

We can look into adding a 'reset background each cycle' gallery show preference if this seems like a feature that would be useful to people.

[Dee Flouton]

I was just trying to gallery run the folder that Liveart posted on textures, but I see that I need to take another tack and do what you suggest in order to view them more clearly. Perhaps adding a "reset background each cycle" in the prefs would be a welcomed idea by others than myself.

[liveart]

Dee

Did you have a source image when you ran the gallery show. In the preferences you can set the gallery show source to a fixed image.

That should eliminate the odd background issue. I rather liked that the strokes overlayed each other. It created interesting effects, and showed the potential of combining the various strokes.

As far as I know there is not a way to have the gallery show wipe the canvas between presets.

Might be a good feature request.

Here is a paseq that will run the set with erase between. Be aware that as I said in the original post these presets will work better when handrawn.

I do not know why all your strokes are dark brown or black. I imagine that it has to do with the source image.

The parameters of the presets are either paint source color or saturation.. so black and brown should only come in it that was your source. or if you had no source and you color wheel was set to black.


Dee I just tested the pas.. I screwed-up a bit not having the source set to image. You can either fix this or simply click to image as the paseq run. sorry.

[David Dodd]

Thanks Liveart for the textureinstructable as well as the presets, which seem to be working fine for me in 3.5 (?). I've bumped around in the texture synth only enough to understand that I wasn't understanding much. This helps and encourages.
The new Gallery Show feature sounds great too

[kiskam]

David, where did you put the presets in 3.5. They don't show up for me.

[johndalton]

In 3.5, the preset folder hierarchy is Preset - collection folders - category folders. So if you have a folder of new presets like the ones being posted you would need to place that folder inside a collection folder. If you place it directly in Preset, then it would be considered a collection folder rather than a category in a collection. loose presets in a collection folder do not show up in the 3.5 preset browser, they need to be in a category folder inside the collection folder.

And as mentioned you can always drag and drop presets onto the application to open them, or you can use the File Import menus to import.

The 3.5 user guide talks more about the preset folder hierarchy if what i'm saying sounds confusing.


Version 4 has a slightly different preset folder hierarchy. There is still the collection - category folder hierarchy for factory preset, but all of the factory preset folders live inside one folder named Preset rather being separate folder next to the Studio Artist application like in 3.5 and earlier versions.

Version 4 favorites is slightly different because there are no favorites collections, so the easiest way to work with a folder of new presets like the ones posted is just to drop the downloaded folder into Preset/Favorite, and then you would be able to access that folder in the preset favorites toolbar or in the favorites section of the main preset browser.

There's more information on working with version 4 presets and how they are organized here.


You should be aware that it's quite likely that version 4 presets will not work in 3.5 or even if they load they may have potentially very different behavior. Anything made in 3.5 will transfer forwards to v4 with no problems. Also, be aware that version 4 PASeq presets will not work at all or even load into 3.5.