Recursive painting or not, is it possible?

[Leonardo Souza]

Hello everybody,
I'm trying to paint a video with windows SA4.
The effect I'm trying to achieve is to make image flow like water drops.
That made ​​me think: how can I get the effect of previous frames in the current frame?
That is, the drops that have already leaked in the previous frames do not appearpresent in the current frame.
Is there a way to develop a drop into different frames of a video?

Thanks.

[Synthetik]

Recursive painting is totally possible. It's typically what we do with the video examples we present as demos of different auto-painting styles. It all has to do with using the concept of overdrawing on the previous frame, or a modified version of the previous frame.

 

I recently re-posted some of the old Process Video Tutorial information on the daily effects blog. They cover the basic ideas associated with recursive painting (also called overpainting). Here's a link to the first and second post in this series. The first of these 2 posts spends a lot of time explaining why modified overdrawing works the way it does to create smooth visual effects over time. I use a water melt quite often as the 'modification' being applied to the previous frame image before i overdraw new paint strokes on it for current frame output.

 

Here's a post that discusses a vectorizer wet drip animation effect.

 

Here's a paint animation strategies topic page in the Tutorials Groups section of the user forum, that contains links to various tutorials associated with building up different paint animation effects. The Movie Processing Strategies on the Studio Artist Tips site run you through the mechanics of all kinds of ways to build recursive processing effects. Here's a link to the first tutorial, which references the others. And the links to all kinds of movie processing tutorials are on the above mentioned Tutorials Group page.

 

We've also discussed using 2 layers to build up recursive processing in one layer and then transfer the current recursive processed frame to the second layer for additional processing for video output that doesn't get mixed into the recursive processing. So you might be overdrawing in one layer recursively to build up a  flowing drip effect, but doing image optimization steps int he second layer that would badly influence the recursive processing if they built up over time as a part of the recursive processing cycle (but are great to help enhance the output of a single movie frame). That technique has been discussed in several daily effect blog posts.

 

If there are additional tutorials on specific recursive processing techniques you want to see us put together just post your suggestions here.

[Leonardo Souza]

Okay, but all these examples use some redraw of the video's frame. What I was thinking about is to make the frame itself (not redrawing it) drain . Is it possible?

[Synthetik]

If you just want to cause image itself to water melt over time, that's easy as well. You just don't do any overdrawing.  Running a water preset that runs for a short time in loop action while streaming the results to an open movie stream will do that.

 

Or am i still not understanding what you are asking to do?

[Leonardo Souza]

Yes that's it. But I need to be aplied in video, not still.

[Synthetik]

3 thoughts on different things you could try. I'm not totally clear on what you are specifically going for visually, so here's some different suggestions.

 

You could build a second layer that over paints on top of the current frame layer that builds in a recursive melt into the video. So that second layer is generated with recursive processing and mixed in with the current video frame. You'd build it so it fades so older drips dissipate over time.

 

Or, you could build a second layer that acts as a warp map that you use to warp the current movie frame. So you recursively process the warp map layer so it appears to be melting down. That hidden warp map layer is then used to interactively warp the current movie frame.

 

Or, you could use a set of bezier paths that you use to melt each video frame. If you want some kind of fixed warp effect.

Or you could use something like the old Default : General : Canvas Melt 1 Cycle PASeq preset to process the movie file. If you want something that dynamically tracks the features of the movie frames. You could work with how the paint preset in that PASeq works to make the effect less extreme, or run multiple cycles if you want it more extreme.

[Leonardo Souza]

Ok, let's consider this: 

"Or you could use something like the old Default : General : Canvas Melt 1 Cycle PASeq preset to process the movie file. If you want something that dynamically tracks the features of the movie frames. You could work with how the paint preset in that PASeq works to make the effect less extreme, or run multiple cycles if you want it more extreme."

 

If I do apply this to a video, it will melt the frame 1 once, frm 2 once, frm3 once and etc...

I would like something that applies

on frame 1 once

on frm 2 two times

on frm 3 tree times and etc...

I mean some effect that consider the application runned on previous time and improve it.

What you think? Is this necessary to make paint melt down?

[Synthetik]

You could build a melt or wet drip effect that gets progressively more severe over time by keyframing the action step(s) that does the melt in the PASeq timeline. The effect would essentially do nothing on frame 1, and then get progressively more severe over time due to the keyframing of the effect. So the playing movie would appear to melt down within the frame.

 

So sure, if that's what you are trying to do, then you could do it that way.