Recently there was a forum post asking about how to get a torn paper look. Now if you approach that request from the perspective of a painting program, then by default you will be trying to figure out ways to have brush strokes emulate bits of paper.
You might start with a preset designed to create rectangles as a way to emulate paper bits.
Then you might give the paint stroke an offset to emulate the edge fade
Then you probably will think about adding a bit of texture to the preset to emulate paper
now the challenging part starts as you try to figure out how to get the strokes placed and colored as you want them.
then you might decide that the rectangle setting is too regular, what you want is something a bit more organic and edge irregular-- note that this will likely mean a completely different brush set up will be necessary.
Generally one could continue with this exploration of paint preset construction and likely achieve something interesting. However::
If instead you had thought about SA as a Visual Synthesizer and asked how can I use SA to break the image into color regions- there are many many ways- your first step might have been an image operation:you would have then thought- ok I have the regions now I want to "lift" them, give a bit of dimension.
so you would have selected from one of the many ways SA can displace an image:
And so after just 2 steps you might be satisfied with the result. - Hurrah! done in 2 mins.
or you might want to refine the edges- give them a bit more pop. Again there are dozens of ways you might do this, but perhaps this time you want something interactive so you can truly tune the result.
warps and adjusts are interactive.. let's try a warp.. notice that the composite mode is set to edge 1
ok so now we have a really nice "torn" edge across the length of the colored region.
again this might be the end of your process. Or you can color adjust, color quantize or other wise tune the image to your liking.
all this and the program never called a single brush.
But what if you want something with these nice long edges but that looks more handdrawn. Do you have to go back and keep searching paintsynth possibilities?
Well why not leverage what you already know. You know that you have a brush that can draw region fills by hand and looks great. You know that you can make an image with ImOps as above.
so what then... Layers .. put the ImOp generated version in layer one. create and new layer- erase that layer to black set the layer composite mode to min. the grab your paper swatch hand draw preset and --wait how will you know where to draw on the black canvas? try activating the onionskin.. cmd t for mac users, now you can see the source and draw your regions appropriately, and neatly or as randomly as you wish.
Yes this method requires that you hand draw, but you have a guide and the bulk of the image is there in the first layer, you only need to add where you artistically desire. So even with handdrawing the whole process could be done in less that 5 mins.
Not a process that would work for rotoscoping. But think outside the confines of an ordinary paint program and I am sure that you can create a suitable approach to that end as well.
Replies
Nice tutorial!
I would be wholly in favor of more of these user generated tutorials.
thanks Thor, but I would say that this really isn't meant as a tutorial, just an eye opener. To be a true tutorial, I would have to have gone in to much greater depth in the PaintSynth side of things. showing all the panels for example not just selected ones.
That said yes, Lucas, I think that users sharing their insights and processes would be great for all and even for John to know how we use the program. I vote for Max to show us his process in a brief primer, very soon... hear us Max?
Understanding how users work with Studio Artist is always great feedback for me. It often times leads to the addition of new features that i wouldn't have necessarily thought about. That could include new visual effect features, or optimized or improved workflow.
I wanted to point out that you could use Path Start Regionization in the paint synthesizer to build automatic adaptive painting regions that are like what you get with the color simplify ip op. Except, that you have all of the features associated with paint synthesizer region fill.
The Color Simplify Regionize option for the path start Generator would be the regionization generator that mirrors the kind of adaptive region generation you can get with the Color Simplify ip op. You would want to use region fill as brush pen mode, so you fill with paint regions as opposed to the normal paint nibs on a path fill mode. And you would want to use the Path Start Regionize option for the Path Shape (path shape control panel).
Here's are a few articles on regionization using the paint synthesizer.
Here's a few effect blog projects that work with path start regionization.
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Keep in mind that path start regionization can be used to define regions to fill with the normal paint nibs on a path model, or the region fill as brush model, where the path defines a single paint region that is then drawn as a single paint nib.
which region pattern type would you recommend to get a full region fill I am only getting hatching or outlines of the region not a solid fill with a feathered edge
Outline1 is the best one to use with region fill as brush pen mode. It gives a much cleaner outline than the first one called Outline.
The first Outline option uses a fairly old algorithm for computing the outline that can add a lot of spatial jumping around and duplication of the path for complex shapes. We keep it around for compatibility with older presets, and the slop associated with the outline generation can be useful for some situations where you are painting in the outline with paint nibs on a path.