Bernard and i have recently been discussing the approach this Spanish artist Juan Miguel Palacios is taking to his personal painting style. He paints on multiple layers of clear plastic canvas. That are then mounted in a frame spaced apart in 3D to help build the perception of 3d in his paintings when you view them.
His work involves real physical painting on the different pieces of clear plastic with real paint. But i thought it offered some interesting ideas for digital artists to consider. I'll suggest 2 different approaches digital artists could take. One would be to build multiple layers, and then print those individual layers on separate sheets of clear plastic using a digital color printer. You would need to put some thought into the framing of the multiple clear sheets spread out in 3D to pull this off.
The other approach would be to use multiple layers printed on aluminum. Ink jet printing on aluminum is very popular right now. You can do it directly with some printers, but most people print onto a transfer sheet with sublimation dyes and then transfer that printed image to the aluminum sheet. The individual pieces of aluminum would be CNC milled to correspond to the 3d shapes being built up, then sublimation dye printed using transfer sheets printed using conventional color inkjet printers, and then stacked on top of one another to build the printed 3d surface. This is a little more involved than my first approach, but could lead to some really interesting printed digital artwork that would be almost sculptural in nature.
We've discussed printing on aluminum before here on the forum and on the Studio Artist news site. There is a commercial printer here on Maui who is well versed in this technique, and i hope to post an interview with him soon to provide some more information on the technical specifics for anyone interested in this approach to printing their digital art on aluminum backing as opposed to canvas or paper.
Actual 3D printers are being developing quickly these days, Microsoft even offers direct support for 3D print drivers in their most recent 8.1 windows release. The coloring associated with the plastic based technology used in current 3D printers is really limited right now, but that may change in the future. This would open up a whole new approach when that part of developing computer based 3d printing technology gets fully worked out. When that happens, those printers would provide another option for this kind of thing.
Ning has an bug issue associated with posting videos in the initial post of a new forum discussion, so i'll include the actual video about this artist i'm referring to that discusses his work in the next post.
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Another completely different approach to printing a representation of 3D artwork in a 2D print is to use lenticular printing. The left and right eye views of a stereo image of your 3D visual content is split up into a series of vertical strips that break apart each of the 2 images. Those strips are then interleaved one by one into a single ink jet print. A special lenticular lens plastic surface is then placed on top of the interleaved ink jet print.
I would like to know what they mean by 3D here.
The frame has perhaps the same depth as Palacios canvas, but I'm not sure if it's the same method !
Isn't it just that their ink jet canvas print is mounted on top of an extended box like frame. You you're hanging a box on your wall with the canvas print either on the top or wrapped around the edges of the box.
Yes you're right, what they call 3D is only the frame box, there is depth in it :-)
The answer ?
as a side note transparencies on top of each other is old school for animation.
We have also had discussions about printing on plastic the best method that I know of is to use a printer that prints with UV curable inks.
Beyond the printing technical details, and back to the program. It would be great if the vectorizor output could go to different layers based on hue value or even better on a intelligent analysis basis where the program was "seeing" the foreground, background and horizon line.
I once again add my vote for 3d capabilities to be added to the program even if they are mostly in the background.
Thanks for posting this discussion, good idea !
Now, I have a question : (I don't remember if I had posted it...)
In the Delaunay Raster Discussion, we had, you posted a preset (TSP subdivision Experiment) that generates 3 layers automatically.
If I would create a multi layer picture, and generate automatically, for example, 8 layers, and in each layer a vectorized part of it, how can I make it ? Is it actually possible with SA4 ?
I'm not sure i understand the question. Are you asking if you can create 8 layers in a PASeq?
Each PASeq actions rep remembers which layer you used when you recorded it. If the Layer Playback flag is turned on in the PASeq controls in the Editor, then when the PASeq is played back, each action step will be recorded on the appropriate layer.
When you start playing back a PASeq with Layer Playback turned on, if there are not enough current layers to do this, it asks you if you want to generate the extra layers before playback starts. The dialog you are showing above in your question.
So if you made 8 layers, ran the vectorizer differently in each of them, and then saved the PASeq preset with Layer Playback turned on.
Or are you asking if you can use that TSP experiment that worked with 3 layers (2 layers being working buffers i believe to generate the effect in a third layer) to process 8 different layers independently?
Yes my question was to create 8 layers in a PASeq, and I took the TSP PASeq for example, because I saw it there.
So you answered my question : I had to use the path layer record option 'vectorizer' on.
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