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. 

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.

First, you want to make a path start regionize paint preset.

So, there is a paint synth macro edit command that allows you to create a default path start regionization preset in one click.

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.

And another one that lets you build a MSG brush off of the current MSG preset in one click.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here's a simple example.

The current MSG preset is a simple bw texture generator.

Running the Default Fill Regionize edit gives the following output.

Note that the MSG effect is not being used.

If you then run the Make MSG Paint macro edit, you get the following result.

Note how the BW texture MSG effect is now being used for each region fill.

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.

Note how the individual MSG generated regions are now colorized.

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.

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.

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.

Here's the output for generator edit shown above.

Note how the visual appearance of the individual path start regions has changed.

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.

Then click on the Index button at the top help toolbar to bring up the index.

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.

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  • Hi,

    I read the tip on simulating the art mapper effect and there is a portion which states that the Art mapper created composite art images and photo mosaic effect by running multiple applications of MSG presets. 

    The question then is if multiple msg presets could be combined to to use a database of images, then one can create this awesome effect if he/she have access to these specific presets or the individual processors responsible for the creation of the effect.

    One particularly cool feature of the art mapper is its ability to produce bi-level color photo mosaic effect which currently cannot be achieved in SA. So if the evolver could use multiple msg presets together with a database of images then possibly movie brushes and the like can also be used together with an msg preset within the paint synth. 

    So John, we would be grateful if you could share these msg presets or processors that  combined to create the effect. This tip you shared is really helpful but it uses msg preset as brush but we would want to know how to simulate the effect using movie brushes or image folder brush.

    Thanks

    • The Source options in the Brush Load control panel of the paint synthesizer include options that use the current Source Brush. Brush being the obvious one. But there are others like Canvas + Brush or Source + Brush that combine the brush with the current canvas or source. So if you are working with a movie brush or image folder brush then they can be routed through the MSG Brush Load effect.

      Bi Level color. One way would be to palette map to a 2 color palette. You could also try that with a 2 color gradient as well. Also, in Algorithm2 there is a Map Fixed Color 1-2. So that's going to use the current output of the Fixed Color control panel (fixed colors 1 and 2).

      There are also Threshold options in Algorithm2. So you could threshold and then use a Fill From Mod in the Paint Fill Setup control panel that colorizes based on the source or current paint color.

    • Again I set the source under the msg brush load options to brush but when I paint I still see the msg preset being used as the brush.

      Thanks

    • If the Source is set to Brush, then the output of the Brush Source control panel is used as the input to the MSG preset you are using in MSG Brush Load. So yes, the msg preset is going to be used as the output of the Brush Load processing. If you are using a msg preset that processes it's input, then the brush image input will be processed accordingly by the msg preset. If you are using a msg preset that is just generative (doesn't process any input io streams), then the source setting won't have any effect because the msg preset isn't using it internally.

      If you just want the Source option to be routed out of the brush load processing (maybe with some additional Algorithm processing), you could use Image Processing Brush Load as opposed to MSG Brush Load.

      ...

      The Evolver ArtMapper Color panel screen capture you emailed me indicates you aren't using any colorization processing for that particular Evolver setup.

      ...

      If you show me an example of bi-level color output you like here i can take a look at it and try to show you how to emulate it in Studio Artist.

    • Hi John,

      Please I have sent a mail rather due to the size of the attached file with a description of what I'm referring to. Run out of data that's why I couldn't reply earlier.

      Thanks again.

    • So the Quad Shift Mean colorization option available in MSG Evolver you pointed out in the email is not currently in Studio Artist. I can look into adding it (or something that has similar visual properties) in the future.

    • Hi John

      3394896192?profile=RESIZE_710xThanks for the response. I was supposed to attach the one without colorization but still achieving the bi-level effect. Initially thought that I have added it. I've reduced the size and attached it here (the one without colorization but still achieving the bi-level color effect). Have also included two files one from normal RGB mapping and another from paint brush load. Have also sent a mail.

      Thanks

      Best regards.

    • You could probably build a paint preset that used a relatively small brush size that colorizes the canvas using Mean Shift algorithm in Image Processing Brush Load. Use the Canvas as the Source. First run your image folder brush mosaic preset. then run the source colorizer paint preset on it afterwards. The small overlapping anti-aliased computation brush would do a reasonable job of faking the quad mean shit colorization.

    • Thanks for the response. But please could you explain a bit don't understand.

      Thanks

  • This post is really helpful but would want to know how to achieve  this results (i.e where the brush orient or is applied according to the source color gradient) using image brush or movie brush.

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