A place to ask questions and receive tutorial information on specific Studio Artist topics.
Building a Tiling Paint Preset
OK, someone was confused about how to create a simple tiling paint preset. So, let's do it. From scratch. Goto the Paint Synthesizer Classic Editor. So i want to reset the paint synthesizer controls to a known state. So i'm going to reinitialize them. I could have used the Reinitialize paint synth macro edit command located in the integrated Help Browser. But i decided to do the same thing inside of the Editor itself. So, holding down the shift key, i then pressed the Init button at the…
Read more…
Comments
There is manual digital painting, where the human artist basically does all of the work controlling how the paint is applied to the canvas. Hopefully using something like a wacom pen and tablet so that they can take advantage of the interactive modulation features (pressure, tilt, tilt orientation, barrel rotation) that can be used to modulate different visual aspects of the digital painting process within the paint synthesizer.
There is interactive intelligent assisted painting, where the human artist is controlling the paint brush, but the movement and interactions of the paint within the brush is also being controlled by various algorithms running in the paint synthesizer.
And there is fully automatic painting, where the user presses the action button and Studio Artist does all of the work from that point.
The paint synthesizer preset collections are setup to mirror this way of thinking about how to work with the paint synthesizer. So the first 3 factory paint synth preset collections correspond to what i just referred to (auto-painting, assisted painting, manual painting). The assisted painting factory presets can be thought of as just a small subset of all of the different things one could do with assisted painting, but looking through them might give you some ideas. And if you run across a preset you like, you can then drop down into the Editor and start to examine more closely how it was programmed.
There are a lot of different tips on various aspects of how the paint synthesizer you can take a look at here.
https://tips.synthetik.com/category/paint-synthesizer/
And there are a large number of different articles in our knowledge base on working with the paint synthesizer.
https://synthetik.com/category/painting-2/
You can find the various video tutorials we have posted here.
https://synthetik.com/studio-artist-training-videos/
So i would encourage you to look through this material, and see if there are specific articles or tutorials that are of interest to you.
There are a lot of other things one could do with the paint synthesizer that could be thought of as 'assisted painting'. In V5.5 for example, you can encapsulate the vectorizer or various image operation effects into the paint synthesizer. So the painting process could be assisted by the vectorizer analysis of an image, or by the vectors generated by a vector producing image processing effect.
This approach is not going to be as interactive as the intelligent assisted painting thing i discussed above, but is more of an out of real time assisted painting.
One can also work with bezier paths as an approach to assist in ones painting process. So you define bezier paths, perhaps by drawing them by hand, perhaps by generating them or manipulating them algorithmically, and then have the paint synthesizer paint them in for you.
I'm happy to dive into anything specific associated with the paint synthesizer you would like to understand or explore in more detail.
It would probably make more sense to do it in a regular forum discussion post, since i can't post any photos in these comment posts.
Also, this topic is so vast, it would help to focus on specific things you are interested in.
Are you really interested in manually interacting with the painting process using a wacom pen and tablet (or a windows surface pen if on a windows surface device)? Or something more fully automatic?
Are you primarily interested in creating abstract painting effects?
Are you more interested in the notion of 'process' (where you setup a process and then let it play out in a recursive fashion to create something)?
Do you want to understand how to embed vectorizer or ip op effects to build assisted painting effects?
etc?
Are you only interested in black and white painting effects, or just black and white effects in general? He had mentioned halftoning effects as something you were interested in, and a lot of the options to generate those are living in image operation effects, or the vectorizer, as opposed to the paint synthesizer. You can of course certainly use the paint synthesizer to make them as well.
We're also looking at adding something to Gallery Show to make generative creation of black and white effects easier there.
If the artwork is studio artist vector drawing, or a vector effect, then you can output that as a svg vector file. You can then import it into studio artist via the file : import : open svg as new canvas, and then render that into a much larger raster canvas. or you could open it in whatever other application you might have that support svg input and do essentially the same thing there.
Here's a tip on generating svg files from studio artist.
https://tips.synthetik.com/generating-svg-vector-output/
..
If you are talking about taking a super low res raster image file and upsizing it, then how you approach that is going to depend quite a bit on what that original raster image looks like, and what you are willing to live with for the blown up version.
If it is amenable to the kinds of visual looks one can get with vector output, then you could try to use the vectorizer to convert it into a vector representation, and then go the svg output route.
Or, if you could get away with repainting it with vector paint effects so that they either maintain or enhance the visual appearance you are going for, then you could do that, build it all into a PASeq, and then output via svg, and then resize that appropriately afterwards by rendering it into the appropriate sized canvas.
I've done cd cover art that was then printed for physical cds in the past where i used supersize in studio artist along with some additional image processing effects before and afterwards to get rid of any unwelcome visual artifacts. I also know of a user who took a 72 dpi art image and just upsized it in photoshop to the much higher printing resolution and then printed it to roughly the same physical size you are referring and won an award for the printed output in an art contest, so it really depends on the content of the image and what you are willing to live with (or not) in the output.
There are various neural net photo size enlarging software options these days, so that would be another approach. Or fractal image enlarging software, which used to be more prevalent but maybe less so these days.
1. I envision to move from one painting to another to create sequences I can set to (my) music in a video editor like Adobe Premier or Vegas Pro. As far as working on this with Studio Artist, where in the SA software do I begin?
2. I have seen how by using loop actions one can modify an image as long as desired but how does one output consecutive modifications as a video?
3. Is (2) the same question asking how to make a SA movie?
Many thanks for your help.
Otto Laske
Gloucester, MA, USA
https://tips.synthetik.com/movie-and-image-streams/
Here's a tip on processing a movie file with a paint action sequence (PASeq).
https://tips.synthetik.com/processing-a-movie-with-a-paseq/
If you want to do interactive things or output loop action effects, then the image or movie stream would be the way to go. You will need to setup your stream write flag option appropriately, based on what you are trying to achieve.
If you want to process an existing movie file, or you are building an animation effect where each frame of the output consists of the processing associated with a paint action sequence, then using the process or animate menu commands to generate your output is the way to go.