So we are going to build a dual-color directional paint preset that can be used to paint in bezier paths with oriented directional coloring (different color on each side of the bezier path as it is traversed).
It is always good practice to start from a known paint synthesizer configuration.
Use the Edit : Paint Synthesizer : QuickEdit : Initialize menu command to do that.
I boosted the Brush Source control panel sizing from 32x32 pixels to 64x64 pixels.
I setup the Paint Brush Load control panel as shown below to build a directional color gradient that tracks the path orientation.
Note that the algorithm is based on building a color gradient between the color values of Fixed Color 1 and Fixed Color 2.
You can edit how the Fixed Colors (1 and 2) are dynamically being computed in the Fixed Colors control panel. I configured it as shown below.
Note how i setup the 2 Color Sources (FC1 and FC2) to track the colors stored in Source Color Memories 1 and 2.
So this particular approach lets you manually setup a color gradient between the 2 colors stored in Source Color Memories 1 and 2. You use the source color picker to do that (choose a color), and then you option click the color memory to record the current source color into it.
You also need to setup the Paint Fill Setup control panel so it actually paints with the output of the Paint Brush Load module. We show how to do that below.
And there you have it.
You can paint in whatever is stored in the current Bezier Path Frame by running the Path : Paint Paths : Full Layer menu command.
I used various path editing menu commands to setup something shown in that first screen shot.
You can also use this custom paint preset for manual painting. The color gradient will dynamically track the angular orientation of the path you are interactively drawing.
If you wanted the brush to be pressure modulated, you could do that in the Brush Modulation control panel.
This is a raster paint effect. Figuring out how to do it using vector paint is probably an interesting exercise.
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Cool thanks John!
The first example in this post shows how to hot-wire the paint synthesizer to force the dual paint coloring to come from the first 2 source color memories in the source area. But typically most paint presets are setup to flow the color through from the current source image, or the color picker, or color palette, or color gradient, depending on which tab is active in the Source Area. So let's take a look at how to modify our current custom dual paint preset so it still paints with dual colors, but ones that automatically track the main color coming from the Source area.
Like in the example below (we are again painting in bezier paths using command k hot key command for Path : Paint Paths : Full Layer menu).
To make this change to the coloring behavior of the dual paint preset we constructed in the first part of this example, i just have to make a few simple edits in the Fixed Color control panel of the paint synthesizer Editor. You can see them below.
You will notice that i first changed the FC1 and FC 2 Color Sources to use the Paint Path Color.
I also added a negative offset for FC1: Offset Start Color, and a positive offset for FC2: Offset Start Color.
FC1 is short for Fixed Color 1.
FC2 is short for Fixed Color 2.
What the Offset Start Color setting does for each of them is a function of their Random Start Op. Note that both of them are set to Clip Lum (luminance).
So the offset is added to the color luminance. And if the offset exceeds the range of the value, it is clipped.
If you look at the Random Start Op menu, there are a lot of different options in there to choose from.
I would encourage you to play with them to get a sense of the kind of control you can have over color manipulation using this approach. This mechanism is used throughout the paint synthesizer, check out the Paint Color Source and Paint Color Modulate control panels to understand what i'm talking about. You will see similar controls there, as well as adjustments that can be made to randomization and offsets associated with them.
Now back to the Fixed Colors.
If you look in the 2 FC Color Source menus, you will see that in addition to a Fixed color memory that records a fixed color that can be saved in the paint preset, and the 2 Source Color Memory options we already showed how to use in the first part of this tutorial, there are the primary Paint Source Color and Paint Path Color options. These are the 2 that flow through the actual primary coloring coming from the Source Area.
So what is the difference between Paint Source Color and Paint Path Color options. Paint Path Color flows through any color modulation happening along the paint path. Paint Source Color flows the original coloring at the start with no additional path color modulation.
To show this off, let's do the following.
Setup the Fixed Colors control panel as follows.
So we setup the first fixed color to be a negative luminance offset of the initial start coloring for the path.
And we setup the second fixed color to be a positive luminance offset of the path coloring (however it modulates).
Now lets add some additional color modulation along the paint path in the Paint Color Modulate control panel, as shown below.
So we added a color gradient that happens along the path length, that will go from the initiaal start coloring to the color opponent coloring at the end of the path length. Note that there is also a small random procedural modulation of 10 going on.
Now if we paint in our bezier paths with this modified paint preset, we get the following.
Only the second fixed color is going to track the path length gradient we introduced in the modified Paint Color Modulate control panel settings. Because it is tracking the Paint Path Color. The first fixed color is tracking the Paint Src Color, so it does not track any changes the Paint Color Modulate control panel introduces into the paint coloring along the path.
This is what i was referring to in the first post in this tutorial, when i said that the 2 Fixed Colors dynamically track the paint coloring.
There are 3 different control panels in the paint synthesizer associated with paint color.
They are Paint Color Source, Paint Color Modulate, and Fixed Colors.
By working with the functionality available in the 3 control panels, you can create an extremely wide variety of different paint coloring effects.
In Paint Color Source you have different controls to adjust or treat the primary paint coloring.
In Paint Color Modulate you have the ability to modulate that primary paint coloring as the paint path progresses.
And in the Fixed Colors control panel you can setup to different fixed colors that can be manually specified, or can dynamically track the primary and secondary paint coloring.
You can use these paint color control panels to build gradient paint effects like we have done in this tutorial. You can also use them to build various impressionist colorings based on opponent or analogous color shifting of the primary paint color. You can emulate all kinds of different natural media coloring effects, like color smear, color pickup and mixing from the existing canvas, color fade as a fixed amount of color on the brush gets used up, etc.
If you play around with the various color controls in these 3 paint color control panels, you will then be able to easily modify factory presets and edit them to create custom coloring effects with them.