WPAP Art

[Alex Wencelblat]

Is there anything SA can do to reproduce or improve this kind of art?.

As far as I know the only way to do it is with the pen tool(Illustrator or PS). 

You can find a tutorial here :

http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-geometric-wpap-vector-portrait-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-16102

[Bernard Bunner]

Interesting Alex....wait about SA 5.

I'm sure that the new features that John added can approach or make this style.

Actually I'm not sure if it's possible ? John ?

[Synthetik]

Yes, there are probably 10 different ways you could create this kind of effect in existing Studio Artist V4, let alone V5.

Why not just use the Vectorizer or Path Start Regionization in the paint synthesizer and be done with it.

You could also manually do some pre-processing to a source image if you are following these fully approaches to add planes of well though out color inversion into0 the source image. To break it up in a contrived artificial way in addition to it's natural edges. And then run that pre-processed image through some standard vectorizer presets to get the effect. You could easily build paint preset tools to do the color inversion. We have a bunch of new effects that do it automatically in V5.

Or if you want more manual control, you can use any of our drawing tools to build a custom regionization map, and then dump that in the selection buffer (or just leave it in the canvas), and run the appropriate path start regionization path start generator in the paint synthesizer to take those hand specified regions and auto-colorize them.

And you can output all of this as a raster image, or as eps or svg vector files.

Now, if you want to do even more manual work, you could in fact use our bezier drawing tools to define all of the regions manually, one by one. And then use the paint synthesizer to auto-colorize and fill them in. Or you could do the coloring yourself, fully manually if you wish, bezier region by bezier region.

Or, you could just turn on the source onion skin feature. And use a region fill as brush pen mode paint preset to do it manually. Why mess around with drawing bezier paths and then fill them in. Why not just draw them directly and be done with it.

If you are using a vector paint preset using this pen mode, you can output all of that hand drawing to an eps or svg vector file if you want vector output. Just record all the manual painting into a PASeq, and then use the appropriate Action menu command to output the vector file.

Come to think of it, Studio Artist actually allows you to generate eps output from plain old raster paint presets. So it doesn't even have to be a vector paint preset. Just use the appropriate setting in the Vector Output control panel for auto-converting raster paint into EPS when you are running one of those Action menu commands that takes a PASea and outputs it as an eps file. The effect you are looking for is a very flat color vector region one, so that very old way to do it would work fine too.

I knocked this reply off pretty quickly, so i'm sure there are other ways to do it as well if you think it through.

I guess we can try to put a tutorial together if some of what i said above (or all of it) makes no sense to you. Or maybe LiveArt or someone else will take a stab at it.

And if you feel i'm missing some critical feature of the desired effect in my quick explanations above, please feel free to point that out and we can delve into examining that in more detail.

[Synthetik]

Alex, i will read through the article you pointed out again to make sure i didn't miss something key to the specific effect you are looking to create, and then i'll try to put together a few V4 presets to help you achieve this kind of effect. So hopefully later today or tomorrow some presets and an explanation of how to use them will get posted here.

It does look like a very fun visual look to try to emulate, and so far i think you can use Studio Artist V4 to do it. So i'll try to show off some of what i discussed in my first post with some specific examples.

[Alex Wencelblat]

Thank you John.I'm looking forward for the presets.

Thinking beyond this initial approach ,it would be interesting to generate random patterns.

But that is a different story. 

[Synthetik]

That's kind of what the new fracture features in V5 do (random patterns). But maybe you are thinking of a different kind of random pattern?

If so, why not post a few visual examples of what you mean.

Vector operations (vectorizer and paint synthesizer) in V5 have some fascinating patterning options available in them. So i'd be real curious to see if we've already covered the particular kind of random patterns you have in mind that you want to be able to create, or if i should drop in a few new features to specifically generate the ones you are interested in.

[Alex Wencelblat]

May be I went to far saying random patterns.
Simply I thought in a random generation of WPAPs for an specific image.

[Synthetik]

The vectorizer has a Random Seed parameter in it's Generation control panel.

So by changing the Random Seed for most presets, you can get a random variation of the specific style that preset creates.

The same thing holds true for the paint synthesizer.

So if WPAP styles can be automatically created by either of them, then it would be straightforward to generate an infinite variety of random variations of the style.

[Alex Wencelblat]

[Synthetik]

One quick V4 tip.

In Bezier Draw, there is a specific LineToRegion option for the DrawType.

It works similar to the Bezier Region option for the DrawType, or the Bezier Curve Pen Mode. As far as how you add additional control points to the bezier path you are drawing. You need to press the command key to add a second point. It takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of it. You have to hit the command key while the mouse is moving, and then the new control point is added.

So this would be a way to build up  bezier regions via a LineTo style pen drawing tool. You can then switch to bezier edit, select the bezier path, then run the Path : Paint Path: Selected Only to paint it in. If you have the Source Area setup to the Color tab option, then the color picker is there, and you can select the color of your choice to paint in the selected region.

Doing this little exercise a few times made me quickly realize that a hot key command to switch between bezier draw and bezier edit would be handy. So i'll add that to my to do list.

You can use the source onion skin as i mentioned while you do this LineTo drawing, and here's how to get at that if you aren't familiar with it.

Now suppose you want to just skip the bezier path part and just draw the regions in.

Here's one simple V4 vector paint preset to get you started. Attached below.

It's called ManualPaintFlatColorRegion1.paint.

Now i would not call this an ideal solution, because the vector regions end up being a little bit rubbery, as opposed to rigid straight lines like you want. I knocked this one off really quickly, so i'll put some more thought into building some better V4 ones.

At this point in my experimentation it became obvious to me that i'm very used to all of the new V5 features, and just consider them a part of Studio Artist at this point, since i use it every day. V5 has several specific LineTo options for directly painting your regions.

As well as something you can turn on for vector paint that insures you get rigid straight lines (as opposed to smooth bezier curves) when they are drawn, if you really want them to be rigid straight vector lines. So if you want to draw rigid straight line vector regions in V5, it's very easy to do. Not quite as easy in V4, because the path to bezier conversion process doesn't have the 'enforce straight lineto behavior if you really want it' features we added to V5.

And V5 also has specific LineTo draw options when working with Region Fill as Brush pen mode, which is not really the case in V4.

And i'm assuming rigid straight lines associated with the regions are kind of a big part of what you are looking for? If not, then the paint preset above might be what you are looking for to get started at least.

In reading the article, the whole faceting discussion is kind of what the vectorizer does if you think about it. But there is a specific stylistic approach to the WPAP faceting that is very stylized. So i'll think about what you could do with the vectorizer or path start regionization to get there in V4 and V5.

Charis Tsevis obviously was influenced by the WPAP artwork, or vice versa, i'm not sure who really started doing this kind of stylization first.  Charis is best known for his Studio Artist photo mosaic work of course, but he also does work very much in this style, and i think he uses Studio Artist in conjunction with Illustrator to create his take on the style.

We actually added some specific image 'fracture' features to V5 that were very much influenced by this particular style of artwork. Especially how Charis approaches it. Because he tends to break the image up into intersecting planes more than just localized lineto regions.

We've had a lot of discussion here about how to abstract regions associated with hair on peoples heads in more stylized ways than just trying to follow their edges, or do that and then straight line stylize it. And the WPAP article discusses some ways to do this with manual drawing of the hair areas.

More discussion to follow later, but i did want to pass on a few tips to get you started. And back off slightly on my V4 does it all perfectly comments, since this little exercise is making me really appreciate all of the cool new features we added to V5.

Also, thanks for starting this discussion on the WPAP style!

These kinds of visual style emulation discussions are really interesting to me and others here, and oftentimes lead to new features being added to Studio Artist when we try something and realize it could be made easier to do if we added some new feature, or enhanced an old feature.

ManualPaintFlatColorRegion1.paint.zip

[Alex Wencelblat]

Thank you John for your research and explanations!.It will take some time to get used to them.

"And i'm assuming rigid straight lines associated with the regions are kind of a big part of what you are looking for?": Definitely as a starting point.