Emulating the MSG Evolver Art Map function question

So I have searched on here for posts related to emulating the old MSG Evolver Art Map function with a movie brush, but it seems like all the links to the "tips" about it are broken.  I have some old brushes that work, the movies they are using have 5 separate "sections" (different movies edited into one movie) of 200 frames for each "section", for a total of 1000 frames in the movie that the brush is using.  My question is, I seem to remember something about "# of indexes", but I can't find it.  In the brush source panel, if you are using 2D indexing, with the first being RGB mapping, there is slider for "MB 2D A Dimension", should I set that to 5 (5 x 200 = 1000).  What if I have a movie with 5000 frames with 10 "sections"?  Thank you, all the old links seem to be dead.

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  • If you are using the 2D option for the MB Indexing (MB stands for movie brush), then the MB 2D A Dimension is the # of frames along the A axis of the 2 D modulation.

    So if you have 5 separate sections that are 200 frames each, then you want to set that A dimension to 200.

    The A modulation would be indexing from 1 to 200 inside one of those 5 sections, the B modulation would be indexing from 1 to 5 to choose the section for that is currently being A modulated.

    Again, if you have a movie with 5000 frames and 10 sections, then each section is 500 frames, so you would set the A dimension to 500.

    You can find the 'simulating the msg evolver art mapper' tips post here.

     

    If you are using old quicktime movie files made with the old quicktime api that apple no longer supports, then you are going to have to convert them.  You might want to make them numbered frames and do it using image folder brush rather than a movie brush.  Since a lot of peoples old movie brushers used the old animation codec for lossless compression, so if you convert that to something like H264 in apple quicktime player prior to big sur (mojave is the last mac os that works with old quicktime api format movie files), the individual frames get fuzzy.  If you save them as png frames images in a folder, you can avoid that.  Depends on your movie content whether you care of not. 

    The indexing discussed above still applies to image folder brushes, since they use the exact same indexing as movie brushes.

     

    We've talked about providing an option so you could just drop a set of movie files in a folder, and then use an image folder brush like you normally would for static images, and if the files are movie files they would just automatically frame index in an animation using an image folder brush.  That would make what you are trying to do way easier.  So i'm assuming you would vote for us adding that as an option to the next release.

    Simulating the MSG Evolver Art Mapper - Studio Artist Tips
    MSG Evolver is a stand alone MSG editing and effects application that shipped with the Studio Artist 3.5 release. One particularly cool feature of Ev…
  • Thank you John!  I knew it was something like that.  I have some old art-mapping movie brushes with quicktimes that still work on my Windows 7 machine in an older version of Studio Artist (plain old SA5) and some of them had the indexing at 200 and some of them had it at 5 and the results were confusing, haha.  

  • I have been getting into Time Particles a bit, still somewhat confused, I would love to know how to go about using one of these ArtMap movie brushes along with time particles, where the various regions mapping parts of the movie sections stay consistent.  I know I would have to use AnimFrameCycleForward if I was processing a movie with that kind of brush, for the various regions to progress through the frames of the movie sections.  You posted about using movies in time particles a long time ago, I can't find it, it probably got hosed with all the videos that used to be here.

    • Yeah, you want to use the AnimFrame Cycle Forward option for the index modulator if you want the movie frames associated with your movie (or image folder) source brush to time advance as the animation you are running progresses.

      We did have a few simple little demos of this in some old posts.  Both with movie brushes, and then things like self animating bezier paths running in time particles.  Like the old jelly fish demo.  I can try to put together a few examples of things you can do and post them.

      What specific things associated with time particles are you confused about?

      Here's a bunch of articles on different time particle things.

      Here's an'intro to time particles' tip.

      You searched for time particle | Studio Artist AI
      • Thank you John!

        I will go through all that and let you know if I have any questions.

      • Running some experiments with this.  I'll post some examples and associated presets after they finish and i run a few more checks.  The power went out here half way through, so i'm starting the run again.  Outputting to a folder of frame images this time instead of directly to a movie file.

        As an aside i've been thinking about setting that up as a behind the scenes default even if you do want to just output a movie file.  Specifically for the exact thing i just went though with the power going out and hosing the movie render.  And also so you could set it up to keep the frame image folder around if you wanted that as a preference option so that you can get at the uncompressed frame images later, since movie file compression often messes with the results you got for individual frames if you want to grab them later and do something with them.

        It looks like you need to use the AnimFrame Cycle Fwd in Mod B to do what you want to do with animating the movie brushes using 2D index modulation, which kind of surprised me.  

        This whole thing was a useful exercise, because it's tedious enough to set it all up that it is definitely worth adding the new feature i was talking about that will make it trivial to do by just dropping movie files into an image folder brush.  So look forward to that in the next release.  And thanks for bringing the topic up.

        • Awesome thank you John!

        • I almost always save out as PNG files and then make a movie file later if I want to

        • I posted one multiple playing movies in a photo mosaic experiment working with this here on my art blog.  The Source Brush setup is shown below

          10891945677?profile=RESIZE_400x

          To be honest, i'm not quite sure what it is doing is correct, so i'm going to dive into the code and take a look at it later today.  Also on my to-do list is to add a new feature to the next release that will make this kind of experiment super easy to setup.  It is pretty tedious right now to be honest.

          After an hour of code review

          And after a walk through the code there is indeed a bug associated with the RGB Mapping options for the 2D Mod B axis of the 2D modulation.  So that is why if you try to set it up in what should be the correct way for this kind of thing (which would be the inverse of above with A = AnimFrame Cycle Fwd and B = RGB Mapping) it doesn't currently work properly.  The bug also affects the A axis modulation output when B is set to any of the RGB Mapping options. So that is why it does something sort of correct in V5.5 when it is setup backwards as shown above.

          Sorry about that.   I'm fixing it today in the next release code.

           

          Working with a single movie in a movie brush using 1D frame indexing with the AnimFrame Cycle Fwd option is way more straightforward to work with.  I'll try to put something together with that running in a time particle paint preset later today.

          Movie Mosaic Experiment
            Experiment using 2D index modulation with an interleaved movie brush setup so that the individual movie frame advance in the photo mosaic....
        • Here's an example on my art blog that shows using a movie brush with 1D frame indexing using the AnimFrame Cycle Fwd modulator option.  I use it to build solid paint nibs for a mosaic, and also drop it into a simple time particle preset.

          10892026454?profile=RESIZE_400x

          I setup the mosaic paint synthesizer preset to be hybrid vector-raster.  The path application repeat is set to 2 so that i get one vector draw pass, and then a second raster draw pass.  10892027459?profile=RESIZE_400x

          The vector Fill Blend is set to 28% so i get the partial transparency solid color rectangle fill into each mosaic tile with darker rim drawing at the edges of the tile.  Then for the second path application draw cycle the raster solid color paint nib is drawn based on the current frame of the movie brush. on top of the partial transparency vector rectangle 

          The movie brush advances 1 frame as the animation output advances one frame.  So each tile is painting the same frame in the movie brush as the animation progresses.

          It seems like it would be fun to have some additional options to offset the frame cycles of the individual tiles (so that each tile could be at a different place in the overall movie brush frame sequence as they self animate), and also to incorporate looping for the movie brush.  So i'll look into adding that for the next release.

          And we're also going to make it easier to do the multiple movies at the same time thing i showed off in the first example without having to put all of the individual movies stacked in one movie brush.

          If there are any other features associated with this kind of thing you want to see in the future feel free to suggest them here.

          Movie Mosaic Experiment 2
            Normal movie brush running with the animation frame indexing in a paint synthesizer mosaic preset.  The movie brush is used as a source br...
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