John,
Thanks very much for the links to several great previous posts in a separate discussion about procedural and generative capabilities of Studio Artist. One link you posted was to this article about how you went about creating paint presets with chaotic attractors. I'm trying to create this MSG preset but hung up on something and hoping for a nudge, or a push!
You posted two images of color versions of evolved versions of the processor. This is not my main question, but I'm curious - you said, "I used directed evolution via parameter mutation in the Evolution editor in Studio Artist 4 to create a series of different attractor images." I'm not clear if you meant that you were manually adjusting the parameters, or that somehow there is a way to start a directed evolution by parameter mutation? I wasn't clear on what you meant. You eventually created a black and white attractor to be a movie brush - I think I can just work through directed evolution to get the black and white version(s) unless you would have happened to remember an idea of what the parameters were - probably not : )
What's hanging me up at the moment is that you created images of the black and white attractors for the movie brush and an inverted version for the mask, but I'm not clear on how the images were created. Maybe it's not important how, as long as you can get the images saved, as you did, by saving them as one frame movie brushes.
So the question is: is there some way to create or export an image of the MSG processor to be used as the movie brush images, or is it just a matter maybe of just doing a screenshot of the MSG Advanced Editor preview of the preset and use the screenshot to create them?
And maybe you don't remember and that's just fine - I will work this through, one of these years!
Mark
Replies
I seem to have worked this through and answered my question in the process. All I needed to do was first get the attractor black and white, then simply render the MSG to process writing a one-frame movie as you suggested.
If you use the Randomize button in the Evolution Editor, that randomly varies the parameters associated with the various processors in the MSG presets that are in the preview cells in the Evolution Editor. So that's what i was referring to when i said "used directed evolution via parameter mutation in the Evolution Editor". Randomize varies the parameters associated with MSG presets, but doesn't change the structure of the processor chain associated with the MSG presets.
You can certainly use a movie brush to incorporate chaotic attractors in a paint synthesizer preset (where the movie is a series of chaotic attractor images). But you can also directly embed a MSG preset into a paint synthesizer preset. The advantage of this second approach is that the MSG preset generating the chaotic attractor is live (being generated in real time as you paint). So you could use temporal generators to modulate specific parameters associated with the appearance of the chaotic attractor. The could be time based oscillators, or interactive pen modulators.
Here's a tip on using msg to extend the paint synthesizer.
For more information on working with MSG chaotic attractor presets in the paint synthesizer:
Here's an effects blog post on painting a chaotic attractor.
Here's an effects blog post on animating a painting chaotic attractor.
Here's an effects blog post on using temporal generators to generate live variations in MSG embedded paint presets.
Here's an effects blog post on building a MSG source brush paint preset from scratch.
It's good to be getting deeper into creating custom presets, brushes, animations, etc., thanks to your wealth of posted tutorials over the years. Thanks very much for the links! I think I will be busy for quite a few months, and then some.
If there is anything you would like to see detailed in additional tip posts, let us know.