Just a heads up that Studio Artist V5.5.5 is now available for everyone in this part of the galaxy. If you are already a Studio Artist V5.5 customer, you can download the latest Studio Artist V5.5.5 installer from your Synthetik myaccount.
If you own a previous version of Studio Artist (v5 or earlier), then you will need to upgrade to access V5.5.5. You can do that here.
If you are not yet a customer, now is a great time to purchase a new Studio Artist V5.5.5 license. You can do that here.
If you are an academic (student or teacher), we have special academic pricing. You can find out about our academic licensing options here.
A ton of Studio Artist V5.5.5 demo movies that showcase some of the extensive new presets in the V5.5.5 factory PASeq movie processing presets are coming online here. Feel free to check them out.
We will also have a full V5.5.5 interactive video gallery on synthetik.com go live in a few days with all of those video processing examples (plus a lot more) as well as info on the specific V5.5.5 factory presets used to make all of the demo videos.
We will be rolling out a ton of new V5.5.5 tutorial videos and blog posts over the next few months. Feel free to suggest any specific topics you would like additional tutorial or documentation information on.
The factory preset collection in V5.5.5 was extensively reworked from the factory presets we shipped in the first V5.5 release. The V5.5.5 installers are setup to drop a new Studio Artist V5.5.5 folder when they do their installation. This new Studio Artist V5.5.5 folder does not get rid of your old Studio Artist V5.5 folder. We did this on purpose to insure that people didn't get rid of the old presets until they were ready to. Some people get attached to old presets, plus existing users might have custom presets in their old Studio Artist folder they need to move over.
This new installer strategy give you the option to get rid of the old stuff when you want to, or keep it around if you want to. You should also be aware that Gallery Show Generative AI behavior is different in each release of Studio Artist. So again, if you are attached to the old behavior for any reason, you are free to keep using it.
There are a lot of new Gallery Show features in Studio Artist V5.5.5, and as i just stated, the Generative AI behavior can and will be different than in V5.5.4.
Keep in mind that you are always free to move presets from older versions of Studio Artist to the latest version, but the reverse is not true. You can not take new V5.5.5 presets and use them in V5.5.4 or V5 or V4, etc.
If you are intimidated by Gallery Show and all of the adjustable preference options it has, fear not. You can use the gallery show quick-edit commands (look in Action : Gallery Show menus) to configure different gallery show scenerios, or take it for a generative Test Drive.
There are also new paint synthesizer and vectorizer quick edit commands under the Edit menu to help you do high level editing of the paint synthesizer and the vectorizer respectively.
The new PowerTool Bar can help you access gallery show Generative AI features up at the top of the Studio Artist working interface. Make sure you check out the new M mutate button in the main preset browser as well.
The new LoadStyle features continue to be expanded in Studio Artist V5.5.5. There are some new style data augmentation features as well as many additional places throughout the program where the style visual attributes are available for visually adaptive modulation of different Studio Artist effects.
This is especially true in the paint synthesizer. If you look in the Miscellaneous control panel there, you will see 3 different Injection Channel modulator options that are now available. Injection Channel modulators (InjectChannel1, InjectChannel2, InjectChannel3) are available throughout the paint synthesizer. You can think of them like Bus routing for visual modulation. If you are familiar with how audio mixers work this concept is going to make sense immediately. Things like style visual attributes, source movie flow, etc are available as source to be pumped through the Injection Channels.
There are a ton of new paint synthesizer features buried inside all of the various control panels as well. Including new options for creating single path Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) sketch effects. And new options for embedding IpOp effects and/or Vectorizer effects directly into a paint synthesizer preset that are then used to auto-generated the paint paths for the preset. Both the Style as well as image folders can now be used as new Background Texture options.
Many image operation effects now have style modulation options available. We also spent some time giving some of the older Studio Artist IpOp effects a makeover in V5.5.5. So old favorites like Convex Hull, Geodesic Fx, Oil Painter, etc have a new sparkle to them with the new options available in them. There are also several new IpOp effects to check out, including the fabulous Image Compeller, Transition, Side Chain, Mondo Simplify, Structure Analysis.
All of the IpOp effects that can be used to generate edges or selection masks were rejuvenated with new features. These new features flow through into Gallery Show's generative bezier path and automatic selection masking options. So there are new one available in there, and the old ones have additional new features as well as better generative behavior.
The PASeq Transition Context features were expanded. Transition Contexts let you build transition effects between either key-framed still images and/or key-framed movie files. key-framed movie files can have start time offsets associated with their keyframe. This allows 2 different (or the same) key-framed movies to transition while they are running in a Transition Context. You can also use Virtual Sub-Nest Keys or Virtual Sub-Expand Keys in Transition Contexts to manipulate the timing of movie files.
You can now use the Action : Animate menu command features to animate to a Transition or Content Context directly. You can also use hotkeys to record new keyframes in either of them from either the current source area file reference (including the current movie time is the source is a loaded source movie), or you can record new keyframe directly off of the current image content of the canvas.
Those new hot key modifers are 'option c' and 'option v' respectively. Option c clicking a Context keyframe records the current source area file reference into the new red keyframe cell. Option v clicking a Context keyframe records the current canvas image into the new red keyframe cell. This works by auto-writing out a new image file to disk. The first time you use this, you will be asked where to put the image as well as what to name it. Subsequent auto-writes will go to the same location, and be numbered off of the base name you specified.
You can also Action : Animate the current selection out to a new image folder brush. Keep in mind that you can keyframe selection movement over time if you wish, so you can use this mechanism to generate a movie (via frame images in the image folder brush) that moved around on the studio artist canvas while whatever processing you desire (specified as the action steps in your PASeq) occurs at each frame time when the animate command is run. Or you can use this to generate custom image folder brushes automatically that you can then bring into the paint synthesizer to use for speciality paint effects.
The MSG Evolution Editor has a new G button that you can press to automatically generate procedural imagery and associated MSG presets. This option is also available as a new Gallery Show Technique. The G button (like the other buttons in that Evolution Editor toolbar) will auto run if you command click it.
You can generate PASeq timeline keyframe animations directly off of the current contents of the EvolutionEditor, as well as the MSG Memory buttons in the MSG Advanced Editor. You can also time expand/compress all of your TG (temporal generator) parameter modulators via a context menu. And there are a few new MSG processors added to the extensive (currently 646 and climbing) processor library.
The annoying V5.5.4 issue with the layer and MSG list popups on windows surface devices is also fixed in V5.5.5.
So there is a quick overview of some of the extensive new features and enhancements available in Studio Artist V5.5.5.
I would encourage you to check out the new factory PASeq presets. Run through them, but also take some time to study how they were constructed. Note how do the individual PASeq action steps in a particular preset work together to build the overall effect. You can learn a lot about variosu ways to use Studio Artist, as well as how to use some of the new V5.5.5 feaatures, by taking the time to understand how those factory PASeq presets were put together and work.
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I'm on the run to d o w n l o a d ... ThankYou Synthetik!