Paint Synthesizer questions!

[Thor Johnson]

Hi, I was hoping you could give a detailed explanation of the meanings, functions, and practical uses of Blanking, Reset Blanking, Reset Generator, Undo Image, and Undo Buffer. I have read the manual and I unfortunately still don't understand what these mean exactly. Thank you 

[Synthetik]

This tip post on Constraining Automatic Paint Strokes includes information on how to work with the blanking buffer.  As well as info on other ways to constrain where automatic painting takes place in the canvas.  So you should read parameter it if you haven't already.  The info is covered in depth in the tip, but i'll include a quick overview below in less detail.

 

The blanking buffer is a hidden 1 bit frame buffer.  You can program the paint synthesizer to paint in the blanking buffer in different ways. So the entire brush nib could be painted in the blanking buffer, or just the 1 pixel paths, or the entire brush rect, or any of the other options in the Blanking parameter in the Path Start control panel of the paint synthesizer.

There are options in the Inhibitor parameter to restrict new paint start locations based on the contents of the current blanking buffer.  To prevent overdrawing.

There are additional parameter options in the Path End and Path Application control panels to inhibit painting based on the contents of the blanking buffer.  Again, the purpose of this is to restrict overdrawing in different ways, depending on how you have things configured for the paint synth preset.

 

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Reset generator resets some of the random number generators in the paint synthesizer.  Based on the Seed value you specify if Reset Generator is turned On.

Random number generators generate a sequence of random numbers that are a consistent sequence for a given seed value.  Changing the seed changes the sequence, but the same sequence will be generated for a fixed seed.

If you turn ON Reset Generator in the Path Start control panel, the same sequence of random path start positions will be generated each time you run the paint synthesizer.  That is not the case with the default Off setting.

 

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The Undo Buffer and Undo Image are the same thing.  The current contents of the canvas Undo buffer.

[Thor Johnson]

Thanks John!

[Thor Johnson]

"The Undo Buffer and Undo Image are the same thing.  The current contents of the canvas Undo buffer."

What determines the current contents of the canvas Undo Buffer?

[Synthetik]

The current contents of the undo buffer are what the canvas looks like prior to starting the paint action. So that if you want to undo the paint action after it is finished, you can revert the canvas to what it looked like prior to the start of that paint action.

 

Try some experiments using the default init raster paint settings (shift click the Init button at the buttom of the Editor to default init the paint synthesizer editable parameters), and then change the FillTo setting from Canvas Image to Undo Image to see the difference between the 2 options.

The top left part of the manual painting above was done using the FillTo set to Canvas Image.  The bottom right part of the painting is the same paint setup except that the FillTo is set to Undo Image.  Note the difference between the 2 for this particular default init raster paint setup.

When you use FillTo with the Canvas Image, then you get accumulative buildup in the current canvas buffer as you overpaint sucessive pain nibs into the canvas.  But when you use FillTo set to the Undo Image, there is no accumulative buildup.  This is because the Undo Image is not changing as you paint.  but if you FillTo the current Canavs Image, then the canvas is changing as you paint.

Typically you use the Canvas Image for FillTo to get an anti-aliased paint nib based on the current Source Brush.  For the default sphere computational source brush, the center will be filled with the paint color and the edges of the sphere source brush will blend to the current canvas buffer.