Let's take a look at some different approaches you can use when getting started with Studio Artist for customizing the factory presets.
When you first start up Studio Artist, the default preference is to startup in Paint Action Sequence operation mode. So the Preset Browser is filled with Paint Action Sequence presets.
You can think of Paint Action Sequences (PASeq for short) as scripts of different executable actions one can perform in Studio Artist. When a PASeq preset is run, it plays back the individual recorded 'action steps' in a linear sequence.
Let's take a look at a specific factory PASeq preset called 'Pastel Water Drip'.
Note that i have my Studio Artist workspace configured so that i can flip between the Preset Browser and Editor on the left side of the canvas, while also being able to work with the PASeq palette on the bottom right side. I pressed the Action button (top left just to the right of the Operation Mode popup in the main Operation ToolBar docked at the top of the workspace) to get the effected visual image derived by processing the current source image (frame 1 of my loaded movie file as seen in the Source Area at the top left side).
I used the Movie Stream option available in Studio Artist to generate a movie file that shows what happens when you run the Pastel Water Drip factory PASeq preset.
So when you play this movie stream, you can see everything that happens as the individual action steps play back in Studio Artist. I used a 10 fps frame rate for the output movie file, as well as a 10 fps auto-write rate for the movie stream, and i used the Gated AutoWrite stream flag option.
If you want to see what individual action steps do in a PASeq, you can just click on the red keyframe cell associated with each action step to play the action step.
So in the screen shot below i first pressed the first red keyframe associated with the SetCanvas-white action step, and the canvas was erased to solid white coloring.
I then pressed the second red keyframe associated with that second 'AutoPaint - LineSketch with Color Diffusion 2' action step.
After the auto painting completed, i got the following canvas image generated by the auto-painting action recorded in that second action step.
Now suppose i wanted to have a different solid colored background, something other than the white default used in the factory preset.
It is easy to make that change, and in the process generating a simple custom variation of the factory preset.
To do that, goto the Source Area, and switch the tab at the top from Image to Color. You then get a color picker you can use to adjust the current source color.
Then you can turn on recording in the PASeq palette by clicking the Rec checkbox at the top.
You can then erase the canvas to the current source color by clicking on the Eraser icon in the main Operation ToolBar (which will bring up a popup of different 'erase to' options, and select the
After you do this, if you look in the PASeq list you will see that you now recorded a new actions tep at the bottom of the PASeq action step list.
You can then drag and drop that last SetCanvas-source color' action step up to the top of the list, click the Mute check box on the original SetCanvas-White action step to turn on Mute for that action step so it doesn't playback, and also turn off the Rec checkbox so you turn off PASeq recording. If you want to fully delete an action step, select it and then press the Delete key.
At this point you have made a simple custom edit to the factor PASeq preset. If you play it you now get the following.
If you now export the edited PASeq preset, you can save it to disk, and will be able to use it later on in your work.
You could export to a new PASeq preset file, or just over write the factory preset if you really wanted to do that.
We will cover some more elaborate PASeq editing in additional posts to this thread.
Replies
OK, suppose you want to grab some action steps from other factory PASeq presets and use them in your customized Pastel Water Drip PASeq preset.
Now if you just load in a new factory PASeq preset using the Preset Browser, you will overwrite the current contents of the PASeq palette. Losing your custom editing changes (unless you saved them out to disk).
So how do you deal with that?
One approach is to use the History Sequence as a buffer.
I configured the right side of my workspace so the History Sequence was docked above the Paint Action Sequence palette (as shown below).
I then ran the Action : Paint Action Sequence: Copy Replce to History menu command.
And i then had a copy of my custom Pastel Water Drip preset stored in the History Sequence.
At this point i am free to use the Preset Browser to try our other factory PASeq presets, looking for something interesting to add into my custom Pastel Water Drip preset.
After some experimentation, i selected the Abstract Watercolor factory PASeq preset.
I liked what it did in the first part, but didn't like the second part. So i manually clicked the appropriate Mute check boxes in the specific PASeq action steps i wanted to mute (mute means they don't playback).
So now i wanted to have the 3rd action step in my custom Pastel Water Drip preset playback on top of my modified Abstract Watercolor preset.
To do that, i can just drag and drop the appropriate action step from the History Sequence into the PASeq list at the location in that list i want it to live in. I drag and dropped it to the end of the list as show below.
The screen snap above shows the result when i play that modified Abstract Watercolor preset. So i now have a custom PASeq preset built from components of 2 different factory PASeq presets.
Fun fact:
There is no difference between the Paint Action Sequence preset and the History preset file formats. So you can import PASeq presets into either palette. You can drag and drop action steps in between them. There are also associated Action menu commands to replace or append one to the other.
Keep in mind that while we are using pre-built action steps in factory PASeq presets to build custom new PASeq presets, you always have the ability to dive deeper and manually edit all of the individual parameters associated with any recordable action step in a PASeq. Or to record your own from scratch by running other Operation Mode effects in Studio Artist. We will take a look at how to do that in the next post in this thread.
Let's dive into manually editing a specific PASeq action step. We're going to focus on the last 'AutoPaint - Line Screen with Color Diffusion 2' action step in my custom Paint Action Sequence. The one that originally came from the Pastel Water Drip factory PASeq preset. That we edited earlier in this tutorial into a second factory PASeq preset.
Note that after i played the 'AutoPaint - Line Screen with Color Diffusion 2' action step (by pressing the red keyframe cell associated with it), the main Operation Mode changed to Paint Synthesizer Classic
And the Preset Browser on the left side of the workspace changed from displaying the Paint Action Sequence presets to displaying the Paint Synthesizer presets.
This happened because the specific action step i played was created using the paint synthesizer. So when you play it back, the paint synthesizer adjustable parameters need to be changed to reflect the values they were set to when the action step was recorded. And the operation mode needs to be switched as well so that the paint synthesizer can be used to run the action recorded in that action step.
If i click the Editor tab (to switch from the Preset Browser to the Editor in that left side workspace dock area), then i have access to a number of different control panels accessible in the Editor from a popup at the top of it.
If you are just starting editing, it will come up in the first Pen Mode control panel.
All of the different control panels let you adjust different editable parameters associated with the appearance and/or behavior of the paint synthesizer's painting output.
That painting output is usually heavily influenced by what is going on under the hood of the paint synthesizer. It has access to various visual attributes derived from the source image (as well as potentially from the current style image), and those different visual attributes can be used to modulate all kinds of different aspects of the paint appearance as well as it's drawing behavior.
Now the paint synthesizer is extremely configurable, and the over 640 editable parameters can be a bit overwhelming (especially for beginners). So what is one to do when faced with this?
One helpful thing you can check is the Get Info dialog, accessible via the context menus available in the paint synthesizer editor.
When i run that after running the specific action step we have been using in this tutorial, i get the following.
So what is this telling us.
First, we now know that this setup of the paint synthesizer is using vector paint, derived off of the parameter settings in the Vector Output control panel.
The paint synthesizer can generate raster paint effects, vector paint effects, as well as hybrid raster-vector paints that use both capabilities.
Second, we are told that an Image Operation effect (IpOp) is embedded inside of the paint preset.
IpOp embedding is a new feature in V5.5. It lets one use the vector path drawing capabilities associated with any IpOp effect that supports vector drawing to automatically generate the paint paths used for a paint synthesizer effect.
To see what is going on with this IpOp embedding, let's switch the main Operation Mode from Paint Synthesizer Classic to Image Operation.
As we can see below, the specific IpOp effect that is embedded in our paint action step is based on the Sketch Mass IpOp effect. This effect is very configurable, so it is capable of a wide variety of output sketch styles. I changed the Composite option to Replace so that we could better see what is going on with the base sketch effect in the screen shot below. The composite option only effects how the raster IpOp effect output is composited into the canvas, it does not effect the underlying vector generation process in any way.
All of the different black sketch lines correspond to the individual bezier paths that will be generated when this IpOp effect is embedded into the paint synthesizer.
At this point i could adjust any of the IpOp effect options that are directly associated with the vector path generation process it uses.
I changed the EdgeLook to be a different stylization (Simplify Lite), and then ran the effect again to see the change i made with my manual edit.
At this point, if i want to record this editing change into my custom PASeq, i just need to switch the main operation mode back to paint synthesizer classic, and then option click the red keyframe cell associated with my 'AutoPaint - Line Screen with Color Diffusion 2' action step.
When i do that, if i now playback my edited custom PASeq preset, i get the following.
Note how the painting associated with the last action step in the modified PASeq is now based on the editing change i made to that Sketch Mass preset used in the original paint step (via IpOp embedding in the paint synthesizer).
Suppose i want to use a completely different IpOp effect instead of Sketch Mass. No problem. We'll cover how to do that in the next post in this thread.
Suppose you want to use a different IpOp effect for the paint synthesizer path generation associated with the 'AutoPaint - Line Sketch with Color Diffusion 2' PASeq action step we have been discussing in this thread.
It is very straightforward to do that. All you have to do is choose another IpOp effect that generates bezier paths, set it up for the effect you are interested in, then switch to paint synth operation mode and option click the associated red keyframe cell for the auto paint action step in the PASeq.
Keep in mind that we are using a special IpOp embedding feature in the paint synthesizer for this example. If that feature was not turned on, none of this is going to do anything to modify the painting until you set it up properly. We can discuss that in another post. We're using this feature because the original paint action step in the factory PASeq preset we are editing used it.
I decided i wanted to use the Color Edge IpOp effect instead of the Sketch Mass IpOp effect we used before. I configured it as shown below.
it's a very simple basic setup for this effect.
You can always click the Init button at the bottom of the IpOp Editor if you want to re-initialize the IpOp effect.
So how does one know if a particular IpOp effect supports bezier path generation. An easy way to check is to run the Path : Generate Paths : from Ip Op menu command, as show below.
If the 'from IpOp' menu there is not grayed out, then the current IpOp effect supports bezier path generation. If this menu is grayed out, then it does not.
Having setup my new IpOp effect that generates bezier paths, to edit my PASeq all i have to do is switch the main operation mode back to paint synthesizer classic, and then option click the red keyframe cell associated with the 'AutoPaint - Line Sketch with Color Diffusion 2' PASeq action step.
I did this, and then ran the edited custom PASeq preset, and got what you see below.
Note that the visual appearance of that last paint action step is now based off of the new Color Edge IpOp effect that i embedded inside of that last paint action step when i made my manual edit to it.
One thing to keep in mind is that IpOp effects can use a number of different input options for what they effect process, as shown below.
So i have the Ip Source parameter for that Color Edge IpOp effect set to the Source Image. So the current source image is used as the input to the effect.
Suppose i had chosen the Current Layer option for Ip Source instead. What would the effect do? Think it through. Or better yet, try it yourself and see what the resut is.
Trying things out by changing individual parameter settings and seeing what the result does to the effect output is a great way to explore what Studio Artist is capable of. Don't be afraid to experiment.