Video tutorial of each option in the Paint Synthetizer editor

[Heather]

HI all,

I have scoured all of the tutorial videos and I am not finding what I am looking for-which is a video tutorial of every option in the paint Synth Classic editor-for instance, a walkthrough of each editor option like pen mode, region as brush mode, brush type, fixed colors, path randomize, etc, etc, and what it does, and why, and how each affects the other. 

is there a place where something like this is located and I am just missing it?

The user guide is hard for me to understand as I am a visual learner; I am seriously struggling with how to navigate this program. It's not you, it's me, as I do have a brain injury which makes it harder for me to read info, I do better by seeing it in real time.

Is there anyone out there who I can pay to tutor me and help me visually learn this program? I have specific things I want to achieve and I am having a really hard time doing so with my current knowledge and understanding of the program. 

I love the program though, I just want to understand it better-and your customer service is the best I have ever had. 

[Victor Ingrassia]

Just in case you didn't find this page: https://synthetik.com/studio-artist-training-videos/

~Victor

[Heather]

Thanks Victor, I did go through these but not finding what I need- I think I need to start from the basics and my focus is the paint synth editor. I haven’t found any tutorials that go through each of the editors like pen mode, brush type, etc. that’s what I’m looking for- does this exist currently?

[Synthetik]

Do you want the old Studio Artist 3.5 video tutorials? I can setup a link for you if so.

After SA V5.5 is out the door, we'll be doing a lot more tutorials with a 5.5 focus.

In the mean time:

The tips site is a good place for getting started info and web articles on features.

The knowledge blog is a good place for web articles on certain effects.

[Heather]

That would be great, I’m looking for tutorials that specifically focus on every editor in the paint synth classic so I can see in real time.

[Victor Ingrassia]

If one were to demonstrate every dropdown menu of every panel in the paint synth editor... i would be an epic event. truly there are SOOOOOO many settings within settings within ... 

I'm experienced, clearly with nowhere near the depth of John Dalton... and my area of specialty is processing video... but if you want to get in touch to ask about some of the key areas of the paint synth, I'd be happy to try to help. We could use Zoom a bit too if you wanted to give it a try. [e-mail]

[Synthetik]

Part of where we're trying to push Studio Artist in V5.5 is more towards higher level editing of paint and other effects. So rather than diving into the depths of the paint synthesizer control panels every time you want to do some kind of edit, you can have access to a set of higher level Smart Edit commands.

We're very open to suggestions from users for new Smart Edit commands.  They can be very specific edits of the paint synthesizer, or things that automatically generate diversity in some particular aspect of it's features.

As we continue to add more adjustable internal parameters, the notion of smart higher level editing of the underlying parameter space becomes more and more important.

[Pete Gunnell]

I'm not even sure what you mean ....... is this like the script links in the help section?

[Heather]

I'm not sure what you mean by smart edit, so I can't really give suggestions, but would totally be open to give my feedback if I could test or understand how this works! I Thank you!

[Synthetik]

Smart Edit commands are a new feature in Studio Artist V5.5.  They are in the Edit menu.

If you are familiar with the existing paint synth macro edit commands, they are basically the same thing.  Except there are a lot more of them, and even more to come.

Let's say you want to make your current paint preset 'tighter'.  If you go to edit : Paint Synthesizer " Smart Edit : Tighten there are a ton of new Smart Edit commands in there to 'tighten' the current paint in Different ways.

You could of curse do everything they do manually by dropping into the paint synthesizer Editor and manually making the appropriate edits.  But most people do not bother to do that, or are perhaps overwhelmed by all of the editing options, or aren't familiar with all of the editable parameters and miss certain things they could do to 'tighten' in different ways.

Now let's say you want to embed the current Vectorizer settings in the paint synthesizer to generate sketch or regionize effects (yes you can do that, and everything is stored in a single paint preset when you do it).

In order to do it properly, there are a number of very tedious edits you need to make in the paint synthesizer to set the whole thing up properly.  Tedious even for me.

So the fact that i can just use a Smart Edit command to do all of that manual editing for me if a huge win.  Because if i do it manually i'll probably miss something and then have to spend time debugging it to figure out what i forgot to turn on or off.

So this is what i mean by 'work at a higher conceptual level.  You can just run commands to 'make the paint wet' or 'embed an image op effect as a bezier path generator'.

There are lots of cool new Smart Edits.  We're trying to add ones that let you automatically dial in what were previously very obscure features (so then they are no longer obscure since you can set them up so easily now).

Do you know how to configure the paint synthesizer to embed a MSG gradient lighting effect as a brush load effect?  Most likely not unless you are very familiar with both the paint synthesizer and how MSG works (since you also need to configure a MSG gradient lighting effect to embed).

But if you can use a menu command, then you can configure the effect using one Smart Edit menu.

Some Smart Edits automatically generate random variations.  You'd probably have to stretch your brain quite a bit to come up with 15 different kinds of gradient lighting effects in MSG, but the Smart Edit can do all of that (including randomizing the parameters in them in an intelligent way).

So hopefully this will start to give you a sense of how powerful these Smart Edit commands can be, and how it can dramatically improve your workflow speed since you can make intelligent edits to the paint synthesizer without having to drop into the Editor or even understand how it works.

Things get more interesting when you realize that Gallery Show can be using Smart Edits internally to intelligently build new mutated presets on the fly using generative strategy preferences that can automatically run multiple sets of Smart Edit commands on the fly as gallery show configures a new mutated preset for each cycle of gallery show processing.

[Pete Gunnell]

Wow!  Would this enable (at some point) Smart Edits that can produce settings that mimic style(s) of particular artists/genres for example? I gauge that they could be used as a start point for developing further styles, including via MSG/Evolver?

I found the videos for SA 3.0 extremely useful - any chance they can be updated/expanded to cover 5.5 ?