msg - Studio Artist2024-03-29T02:12:37Zhttps://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/feed/tag/msgModifying an MSGhttps://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/modifying-an-msg2023-07-04T08:19:27.000Z2023-07-04T08:19:27.000ZTony Bouttellhttps://studioartist.ning.com/members/TonyBouttell<div><p>Here's a problem I've been having:</p><p>I came accross an interesting MSG, and wanted to modify it by adding Gradient and lighting.</p><p>Essentially I wanted the final output to have the same color as I got at the ForceColorMap DialMod step, but with an embossed look.</p><p>I added the two extra steps ( Gradient and Lighting, each with RGB channels )</p><p> What I wound up with was an b/w embossed output without the color.</p><p>I can't figure out what I've gotten wrong. Any help would be appreciated.</p><p>fyi. I tried to attach the MSG, but kept getting a "Sorry that upload didnt work" message</p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12130288271,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12130288271,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12130288271?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p></div>MSG question about how inputs and outputs workhttps://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/msg-question-about-how-inputs-and-outputs-work2023-06-12T05:06:00.000Z2023-06-12T05:06:00.000ZTony Bouttellhttps://studioartist.ning.com/members/TonyBouttell<div><p>I've been trying to take the output from the <strong>RankArea</strong> <strong>SRC</strong> and use it as input by <strong>ADVTurb</strong>, and then use that output as the input to <strong>3CScanLIneMod</strong>.</p><p>My end results would be a <strong>3CScanLineMod</strong> rendering of an image that has been warped by <strong>ADVTurb</strong> and then modified by <strong>RankArea</strong></p><p>Using <strong>RankArea</strong> and <strong>3CScanLIneMod </strong>by themselves works fine, as do <strong>ADVTurb</strong> and <strong>3CScanLIneMod.</strong> But, having all three doesn't work as expected.</p><p>I cant figure out what arrangement of <strong>Inputs/Outputs</strong> of the <strong>SRC</strong> will give me a good result,</p><p>Here are the two MSGs:</p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11736118699,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11736118699,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="11736118699?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p></div>MSG Development Updateshttps://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/msg-development-updates2022-03-03T21:13:26.000Z2022-03-03T21:13:26.000ZSynthetikhttps://studioartist.ning.com/members/synthetik<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10167841882,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10167841882,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="10167841882?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
<p>I wanted to start a new discussion here focused on both what we're working on as far as upcoming MSG developments go, and to allow people to chime in with their suggestions for new MSG features they would like to see us add in the next Studio Artist release. Now is a great time to chime in with those suggestions, since i'm currently knee deep working on new MSG features right now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And there are a lot of new MSG features under development.</p>
<p>I have to confess, there was a time where i wondered if we were going to continue developing MSG at all. Was it still relevant to where we were heading?</p>
<p>Those thoughts have long passed me by. My current viewpoint is that MSG is a secret weapon, a literal treasure chest containing a vast repository of different visual effect and generative synthesis algorithms. </p>
<p>Dr Science's cabinet of intellectual visual curiosities? Perhaps. But also so much more. The penultimate procedural pattern and texture generation system. That is also a fully reconfigurable modular image processing system. That also happens to be an abstraction wrapper that allows evolution algorithms to manipulate both individual MSG processors and processor chains. Complete with a full population of manipulatable MSG presets to sample from in the form of the MSG Evolution Editor.</p>
<p>One can of course use MSG presets directly as visual effects<em> (both generative and filtering effects)</em>. But they can also be an underlying user-reconfigurable component inside of practically everything else in Studio Artist. </p>
<p>The Paint Synthesizer has always been able to embed MSG presets internally. MSG Brush Load, MSG Live Source Brush, MSG derived PathStart and Path Shape. </p>
<p>Dual Mode Paint also allowed you to use MSG presets as an internal dual operation. A lot of the factory DualMode Paint presets use custom MSG presets for dual op warp and the effects.</p>
<p>In the next version of Studio Artist currently under development you can now embed MSG directly into a Vectorizer preset. Suddenly everything you can do in MSG has the potential to be output as vector graphics if you want that. Or you can view the Vectorizer render engine as a way to extend the visual appearance of a MSG derived effect. Or you are embedding MSG inside of a Vectorizer preset that is being designed to then be embedded into a Paint Synthesizer preset.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>We're adding new MSG processors. So feel free to suggest new things<em> (or old things we missed)</em> that you would like to see us include in the MSG processor library.</p>
<p>MSG didn't work directly with the new Style features in V5.5. We want to fix that in V6. By opening the MSG architecture up to Style Modulation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are a lot of new features in the MSG Evolution Editor. New ways to interactively evolve the population of MSG presets contained in the preview cells of the Evolution Editor. Including new crossover algorithms for evolving new processor chains.</p>
<p>The Evolution Editor is now integrated into Gallery Show in different ways. You can of course manually interact with the Evolution Editor in real time while Gallery Show techniques build visual effects by sampling the MSG preset population within the Evolution Editor. But you can also let Gallery Show generative ai steer the boat, using generative ai to evolve new MSG presets inside of the Evolution Editor while it is running MSG Evolution Editor based techniques at the same time.</p>
<p>I've been calling this MSG Drifting. The whole notion of drifting through the possible MSG parameter space while gallery show is working off of the sampling pattern created by the drift. Even if the generative ai is controlling the drift, you can still jump in manually to do some hand steering of the boat if you wish at any time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are many other things we're working on as well. More on those later. </p>
<p>Again, i'd love to hear suggestions from people who use MSG about what they would like to see added, fixed, whatever.</p>
<p>Or if you don't use MSG, you're welcome to explain why you find it too obtuse or whatever so we understand that here. </p>
<p>We're building out new QuickEdit commands for MSG so that people will be able to build or edit MSG related things without necessarily having to do it by manipulating raw processor atoms in the MSG Advanced Editor.</p>
<p>And part of the goals for the new Evolution Editor features is to really extend the range of creative possibilities you can implement there for non technical users.</p></div>How to emulate the old MSG Evolver ArtMapper in SA V5.https://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/how-to-emulate-the-old-msg-evolver-artmapper-in-sa-v52019-05-15T19:54:31.000Z2019-05-15T19:54:31.000ZSynthetikhttps://studioartist.ning.com/members/synthetik<div><p>SA 5 has some features that make it fairly easy to get going simulating the old MSG Evolver ArtMapper. The SA5 paint synthesizer is very flexible, and can emulate what the old ArtMapper did. </p>
<p><em>I posted this as an answer to a forum discussion today, but i'm duplicating it here for future reference for people interested in the topic</em>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>First, you want to make a path start regionize paint preset.</p>
<p>So, there is a paint synth macro edit command that allows you to create a default path start regionization preset in one click.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576786065?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576786065?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Running the Default Fill Regionize Edit macro edit command (click the arrow to run the command) edits the paint synthesizer settings to use a default path start regionize effect. It fills the individual regions with solid color.</p>
<p>And another one that lets you build a MSG brush off of the current MSG preset in one click.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576806695?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576806695?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>So, clicking the Make MSG Preset macro edit command edits the current paint synthesizer so that the fill is coming from the MSG Brush Load.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576910104?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576910104?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>This default msg brush load is going to use whatever the current msg preset is for the MSG effect. So if it's a black and white msg output texture, then every path start region will be painted with the MSG effect (which is a bw texture that might have no relationship to the source image.</p>
<p>SA 5 has an additional Algorithm 2 option at the bottom of the MSG Brush Load control panel. You can use that to bring up different colorization or other effects that get run on the MSG output prior to using it as a paint fill.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576942550?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576942550?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>In the screen shot above, i have the Algorithm 2 option set to the PaintColor MeanShift effect algorithm. this performs a colorization effect based on the local source image statistics for the region being painted.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Here's a simple example.</p>
<p>The current MSG preset is a simple bw texture generator.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576985490?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576985490?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Running the Default Fill Regionize edit gives the following output.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577005710?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577005710?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Note that the MSG effect is not being used.</p>
<p></p>
<p>If you then run the Make MSG Paint macro edit, you get the following result.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577017505?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577017505?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Note how the BW texture MSG effect is now being used for each region fill.</p>
<p>Algorithm 2 in the MSG Brush Load control panel is set to None in this example. If i then set it to the PaintColor MeanShift option i get the following result.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577035528?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577035528?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Note how the individual MSG generated regions are now colorized.</p>
<p>There are lots of different colorization options available for Algorithm2. they all look different. Experimentation is the best way to figure out how they look.</p>
<p></p>
<p>To use a different path start regionize generator with a different visual appearance, just got the Path Start control panel and change the generator to a different regionize option. The default macro edit is using the AdvWatershed generator as seen below.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577079933?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577079933?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>If you change that generator setting to a different regionize option ( i used Adaptive Block Regionize below), then you can generate a different visual appearence for the generated MSG filled regions.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577121596?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577121596?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Here's the output for generator edit shown above.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577134179?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2577134179?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Note how the visual appearance of the individual path start regions has changed.</p>
<p></p>
<p>If you don't know how to get to the paint synth macro edit commands, they are located in the integrated help browser. Open the Help window if it's not already up in your main workspace.</p>
<p>Then click on the Index button at the top help toolbar to bring up the index.<a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576810564?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><br/><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576810564?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576810564?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a></p>
<p>Then click on the Paint Synth macro Edit link. That will bring up the paint synth macro edit commands. Clicking on any of the active link edit commands will run that macro edit.</p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576790914?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2576790914?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-full"/></a></p></div>Tutorial videos?https://studioartist.ning.com/group/msg/forum/topics/tutorial-videos2009-03-15T20:23:02.000Z2009-03-15T20:23:02.000ZFlorence Arturhttps://studioartist.ning.com/members/FlorenceArtur<div>Hi,
The MSG manual says that there are video tutorials on MSG on the program disk CD-ROM, but I can't find them. Can somebody tell me where they are?
Thanks in advance
Florence</div>