Burt

I love this PASq "Colorized Ribbons." 

It's performance is HEAVILY influenced by what source is used. But nothing is consistently rendered. It's a crap shoot everytime. I hope I can find the author and find out what's going on.

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  • Ok, so i just manually edited the PASeq you mentioned (Colorized Ribbons) so it draws the same thing every time.

     

    The randomization is coming from the second AutoPaint action step in the PASeq.

    Now normally you can turn on the Reset Generator option in the Path Start control panel. And if you do this, then the main random number generator for the paint synthesizer gets reset to whatever the Random Seed parameter is set to every time you run the action step.

    The PASeq preset has this set to Off for that AutoPaint action step.

     

    However, this particular paint preset is using a IpOp VectorGen to Internal Path Memory option for the Generator in the Path Start control panel.

    This means that the current IpOp effect is generating bezier paths that are then auto-loaded into the paint synthesizer internal bezier path memory.

    So you need to turn off any unique randomization in that IpOp effect. And the _Random parameter for that IpOp was set to Unique, so it will always be different every time you run it (and random parts of the effect). So you want to set that to Use Seed.

    And then after you make that editing change, you need to re-record the AutoPaint action step so it references that IpOp edit change.

     

    So once you make those 2 editing changes, then you have a PASeq of the same effect that plays the same each time you run it.

    But then you need to manually change those 2 random seed values if you want to create a different random variation of the effect.

     

    So we can think about adding something to V6 to make it easier to run a QuickEdit command to turn on or off unique randomization in a PASeq.

    In V5.5 you have to manually investigate to figure out what is going on, and then make manual editing changes to change the behavior if you want to do that.

     

    I will suggest that the people making our tutorial videos and blog posts add one on this particular situation, to better describe what i just laid out above.

  • Wow.  You write like the developer.... so, help.

    You wrote:

    The randomization is coming from the second AutoPaint action step in the PASeq. Ok. I get that and it's location

    Now normally you can turn on the Reset Generator (Did a "help" search on "Reset Generator" and nothing came up.) option in the Path Start control panel. And if you do this, then the main random number generator for the paint synthesizer gets reset to whatever the Random Seed (and where do I find that?) parameter is set to every time you run the action step.

    The PASeq preset has this set to Off for that AutoPaint action step.

     

    However, this particular paint preset is using a IpOp VectorGen to Internal Path Memory option for the Generator in the Path Start control panel. (great.... and now, in Englsih? I'm an artist, strugging, who just spent 135$ on an application that sounds like I have to have a programer's degree. I follow you all the way until you start using "insider speak" with "IpOp VectorGen." Seriously... ?)

    This means that the current IpOp effect is generating bezier paths that are then auto-loaded into the paint synthesizer internal bezier path memory. (This is pretty funny... its assumes way too much in this end user's skill set.)

    So you need to turn off any unique randomization in that IpOp effect. (... and I'd find that where?) And the _Random parameter for that IpOp was set to Unique, so it will always be different every time you run it (and random parts of the effect). So you want to set that to Use Seed.

    (I don't want to cause any embarassment, but you need this feed back. I was a technical writer for years... I get this is NOT easy to explain to non-programers, but at the end of the day, a frustrated and confused client is the last thing anyone needs.... but really, this is very disheartening to read. I am building a buisness of creating custome portraits with some level of consistent out put. I don't have the time, skills or engergy to have to deal with this much confusion about how to get an end result that's professional. This is not the only software app I'm using. It is by far the best for options, but at some point having access to all options leaves you with no options. It's just too random.)

    And then after you make that editing change, you need to re-record the AutoPaint action step so it references that IpOp edit change. (....wah?)

     

    So once you make those 2 editing changes, then you have a PASeq of the same effect that plays the dame each time you run it. (But... what "effect?" Same yellow, teals, blacks and reds? In the same way? What "consistentcy" will result in this? Or what can I change to have the control to produce what I want, when I want it? Again, I'm not a programmer, so the instruction set has to be dumbed down or the interface has to include a section where the app does that programming for me. 

    Do you recommend and enduser who IS an artist  and his talioring this?

    From what I can tell in the Gallery, many of these images are just photos randomly run and then displayed... sort of as if the user is just showing off a picture that they think is really cool,  founda a PASeq that did this really cool thing.... but there's no point to showing off a PASeq effect.

    But then you need to manually change those 2 random seed values if yu want to create a different random variation of the effect. (again... and... where do I find that? "Seed value" isn't even a thing for which I can search help. Again, insider-speak. I'm not part of the inner circle.

     So we can think about adding something to V6 to make it easier to run a QuickEdit command to turn on or off unique randomization in a PASeq. (And I'll be glad to be tester. But do some client research first... who are your end users?)

    In V5.5 you have to manually investigate to figure out what is going on, and then make manual editing changes to change the behavior if you want to do that. (...and THAT is the challenge with this application.. I'm questioning the value of this.. I don't have the time to mannual guess given all the variables that can affect the outcome.)

    I will suggest that the people making our tutorial videos and blog posts add one on this particular situation, to better describe what i just laid out above. (well.... if they use the same language and "insider" speak you did here, I suspect it won't have expected out come. So, the idea sounds great, but the execution has to change. Someone there has to start using language/communication skills far different than from what I just got here.)

    I'm not even sure where to start "editing" this PASeq.

    All the best on this. I'm going to evaluate until tomorrow. If I can't get a break through on this, I'll start making an effort to get refunded.

  • I wanted to provide a quick answer to this advanced Studio Artist question you asked earlier. So sorry if it was overly terse in my first reply and you got upset by that.  i was very serious about getting one of our tutorial video people to put together a video tutorial with this specific example in it.  I'm happy to provide some more tutorial info here as well.

    I am going to point out that Studio Artist is an extremely sophisticated piece of software with extreme feature depth under the hood.  So getting familiar with all of the different aspects of working with it is going to take awhile.  You have to wrap your brain around how it is constructed.  We will work through some of the different resources you can use to learn more as we work through a more detailed explanation below.

     

    Studio Artist creates different effects using different Operation Modes.  Here's a tip on working with the different operation modes.

    The paint synthesizer is one of the operation modes.  You can do manual painting, or you can do automatic painting.  The paint synth is very configurable (over 640 editable parameters you can adjust), so not only can you create an essentially infinite variety of different paint effects, you can also configure it to build image synthesis or image transformation effects as well.

    Image Operation mode is another one of the operation modes. We call it Ip Op mode for short.  These are all various different image processing effects. Some (not all) of them also can be used to generate bezier paths associated with vector drawing operations they may perform internally.

    The paint synthesizer is configurable enough that you can use any of these IpOp effects that generate bezier curve vectors as a part of a paint synthesizer preset (the vector path generation part).  We call this embedding.  You are embedding the IpOp effect into the overall paint preset.  This lets you build an effect that is based on the vector paths generated by the IpOp effect, but you have the full paint synthesizer editable control over what is getting drawn with those IpOp derived bezier paths.

     

    So, the particular Paint Action step in the Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) you brought up for discussion has an Ip Op effect embedded inside of it.  The paint preset (and the paint action step derived off of it) stores and plays back both the complete set of paint synthesizer editable parameters as well as the complete set of editable parameters associated with the Ip Op effect it references.

     

    Here's a screen shot of the Paint Action Sequence preset you mentioned (Colorized Ribbons).

    9801816486?profile=RESIZE_930x

    I found the preset using the Search tab in the Preset Browser.

    9801817277?profile=RESIZE_584x

    Paint Action Sequences (PASeq for short) can be thought of as a script of different actions one can perform in the program that are run sequentially.  An action can be a manual paint step, or an auto paint step, or some other effect from one of the other Operation Modes.  Here is a tip that is an introduction to paint action sequences.

     

    Now if i click on the red keyframe cell associated with the second AutoPaint action step in the PASeq above, the operation mode will switch to Paint Synthesizer when that action step plays back, and the Editor will be setup with all of the specific parameter settings associated with that paint action.

     

    We are going to dive into different control panels in the paint synthesizer below.  Here's an overview of the design philosophy behind the paint synthesizer.  The Paint Synthesizer chapter in the User Guide pdf has a ton of additional information.

     

    If we look at the Path Start control panel in the Editor after running that AutoPaint step, we see the following.

    9801821870?profile=RESIZE_930x

    You can see that that the Reset Generator parameter is turned off.

    If you hold your cursor over one of the parameter names in the Editor, you get a floating help tip as well as some additional info in the bottom left corner of the status area at the bottom of the workspace.

    9801823659?profile=RESIZE_930x

    So if you are ever curious about what a particular parameter does, that is the place to look first for a short explanation.

     Now page 101 in the Paint Synthesizer chapter of the User Guide pdf has some additional information on the Reset Generator parameter and what it does.

     

    If you look at that Path Start control panel, you will see that the Generator is set to 'IpOp VectorGen to Internal Path Memory 1'.

    The path start Generator defines how the different start locations for the individual paint paths are generated.

    The particular generator option used in this particular paint preset is associated with embedding an IpOp effect that generates bezier paths.  It runs the IpOp to generate a set of bezier paths, and then records them internally in the paint synthesizer's internal bezier path memory.

     

    If you look in the Path Shape control panel, you will see that the Path Type is derived off of the Internal Path Memory 1 (specifically cycling through all of the individual paths in that bezier path memory).

    9801885883?profile=RESIZE_930x

    So the specific editing options used in this particular paint preset are very advanced.  I'm showing you what is under the hood to hopefully give you some idea of the vast potential range of different effects one can create using the system.

    Setting up this particular preset by hand is involved, but there is a QuickEdit command to help you do it in one edit (embed the current ipOp effect to drive the vector path painting in the paint synthesizer).

    9801887468?profile=RESIZE_930x

     

    If you look in the Path Randomization control panel, you will see that some gaussian noise randomization is turned on in there.

    9801888853?profile=RESIZE_930x

    It is small, but it is justling around the bezier paths as they are being painted.

    If you turn on that Reset Generator option in the Path Start control panel we discussed earlier, it not only resets any random number generators associated with the path start process, but also everything else in the paint synthesizer. So it will also tied the gaussian noise being used in the Path Randomize control panel to a specific Random Seed that has now appeared as an editable parameters in Path Start control panel when Reset Generator is turned On.

    9801890301?profile=RESIZE_930x

     

    After making this change, you would have to record the editing change in the paint action sequence.  To do this, you hold down the option key (alt on windows) and click the red keyframe cell associated with the action step in the PASeq you are editing.  The current parameter settings in the Editor will then be record in that action step in the edited PASeq preset.

    There are also specific context menus you can record editing changes in a PASeq, check out the Context menu Commands section of this tip.

     

    I mentioned that there was a second source of randomization goin on in this paint preset, one associated with the IpOp effect that is embedded inside of it. I will discuss that and how to turn it off in the second part of this post.

     

     

     

     

    Operation Modes
  • OK, so in the first part of this extended discussion, we talked about how the paint synthesizer preset being used in the PASeq you were interested about had an embedded IpOp effect in it.

    Here's the specific IpOp effect that is embedded in it.

    9801906675?profile=RESIZE_930x

    Note that the _Random parameter is set to Unique.  The terse status help for Random is shown below

    9801908456?profile=RESIZE_930x

    So Unique means that a unique random seed is used every time the effect is run.

    if you change it to Use Seed, then the same specified Seed value is used every time it is run (so you always get the same random effect derived off of the seed value you specified).

    9801909860?profile=RESIZE_930x

    So you would want to make this editing change as well as the one in the paint synthesizer Path Start control panel we discussed in the first part of this extended discussion.

    You make both editing changes to change the behavior of the paint synthesizer, and then you either run the Interface to Action context menu on the selected AutoPaint action step you want to record over, or you option click the red keyframe cell associated with the action step.

     

    After you have edited the PASeq preset, you need to export the changes you made, since they are in memory now, and not out on disk in the preset file stored there.

  • Some philosophy.

    Part of the reason we provide an extremely large number of factory presets is to help beginners get over the initial hump of using the program, by providing a ton of prebuilt visual effects, pre built paint presets, etc.  So one can use the system without understanding everything under the hood.

    There is a lot of expertise used in putting those factory preset together, and fully understanding how every single aspect of them works is going to take some time and effort on the part of a beginning user to fully understand what is going on in them.

    The expertise is required because of the extreme feature depth of the program.  This extreme feature depth is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. It is the reason why Studio Artist is so amazing.  All of the various factory effects we provide via factory presets are a very tiny fraction of the potential range of visual effects one could create with the system.  including the ability to develop totally custom unique visual styles (if you want to go that route).

     

    There are a lot of different procedural randomization options and features built into the program all over the place. We tend to view behavior that is dynamic and complex as being a good thing.  The same kind of natural complexity you get with more organic marking and painting tools.

    At the same time, we understand people like the option to turn on exact reproducibility sometimes, depending on their workflow.

     

    We have been developing various editing features like the QuickEdit commands i mentioned before to help beginners manage the complexity.

    And i think the example you are bringing up here is a great one for a new QuickEdit command for PASeq presets. So that you could run a single macro edit that would be smart enough to look at individual actions steps and do the appropriate thing under the hood to make them all track a specific random seed or to always be unique and different.

    We've though about adding this before, and it is already on the V6 feature list for PASeq QuickEdit features we would like to add in the next release.

     

    The generative AI features we have been developing in V5.5 and are continuing to develop in V6 are also focused on providing automated ways to manage under the hood complexity.  Let the intelligent AI capabilities build presets for you automatially.

     

    There are many different ways to approach using Studio Artist.  if you have a lot of experience with manual painting and drawing, you might want to approach it more from that viewpoint.  I'm happy to point out different approaches. Craig Deeley is one of our users who primarily uses the program for manual digital painting.  So he might be a good resource to ask some questions to if that is the more traditional mindset you are coming from.

     

    Other users are focused entirely on using PASeqs to process video and movie files.  They have a very different mindset than manual painters.  We have hundreds of video processing examples that ill becoming online at synthetik.com very soon linked to V5.5.5 PASeq presets to help these people get started quickly.

    Other users are focused on hand painted animation. So they manually paint, but they use key framing and frame based onion skinning features to build up hand painted animation over time.

    Other users are very focused on exploring the boundaries of visual abstraction.

    Other users are very focused on building photo mosaic effects.

    Other users are very focused on emulating traditional techniques like woodcut or engraving or lithography, so they use Studio Artist as an engine to build digital simulations of those various artistic marking systems.

    Other users just enjoy the fact that they can create all kinds of different artwork examples quickly without having to take years to learn manual drawing skills.  Or they are just interested in getting more exposed to the whole concept of making art.

    Other users may be physically disabled, and use Studio Artist's various automatic approaches as a physical aid, or as an inspiration.

    One of our users works with the software to build artistic imagery for paintings that are then hand painted with traditional oil paints where the human artist works off of the automatically generated abstracted visual image Studio Artist created, repainting it by hand in oil paint.

    There are lots of dfferent approaches one can take with Studio Artist.

     

     

    craig deeley
    A place for Studio Artist Users to ask questions and to share art.
  • I added the Paint Action Sequence QuickEdit commands i alluded to in the discussion above to our pre_V6 codebase. So the next release of Studio Artist will include 2 specific PASeq QuickEdit commands that do everything i described how to do manually fully automatically for any multi-step PASeq.

    I've had PASeq QuickEdit commands on my to do list for awhile, so this whole thing was a good excuse to dive into addig the new features.  They did not make the V5.5 cutoff obviously. But we'll be adding a lot more of them in V6, along with MSG QuickEdits, etc.  

    Since you are getting started, MSG stands for modular synthesized graphics, and is a way to build custom generative and/or image processing effects from over 600 different image processing modules.  You can use MSG to extend the capabilities of the paint synthesizer (drop a modular image processing system into a digital paint brush). Or you can use MSG to build stand along visual effects.  Ones that generate procedural imagery from scratch, or ones that process images in some wayWe provide a MSG Advanced Editor that is rather technical in nature, as well as an Evolution Editor that lets a naive user generate new MSG presets by mutating existing ones.

     

    Feed back from people getting started with the program is always good, and it should be apparent that we do listen and respond to it.  How quickly do other software programs listen to your comments about some area of their program you are having difficulties with and then add a new feature a few hours later than makes the editing of that issue easier for you.

    Synthetik customers have an opportunity to have a much closer relationship with the development and documentation team here than you are typically going to get at other software companies.  You got a timely answer to your initial question, and then more detail when you found the initial answer confusing.  Again, sorry if my initial response seemed terse, but i'm pretty busy and wanted to get something up that quickly explained how to over come the issue you brought up.  

     

    But you also need to keep in mind that the lower levels of the software includes a huge number of very technical features.   Understanding all of that is going to take some time, and involves diving into using the program, exploring what it can do. We do our best to try and document all of the various features, but we will always be behind that ultimate goal to some extent because the program is being developed extensively all the time, so new features are always being added to the mix.  And the mix is very deep.  Again, our goal is to try and use generative AI to help manage that complexity for people who don't want to know all of the details.  

    Things like QuickEdit commands are an example of heuristic ai, they follow a specific set of adaptive intelligent rules, but those rules change depending on what is going on inside of any given preset. So when you run one, the software is adaptively adjusting itself as needed to do the higher level command edit you specified.

    Visual attribute modulation is an example of a different kind of generative ai used in Studio Artist that is not heuristic, but is based on trying to model and understand imagery the way people do.  Based on models of how the visual cortex processes visual information in the brain.  Visual attribute modulation is used all over the program in many different ways Even manual paint presets may be modulating themselves internally based on their perception of what source material you are working with, how that material is being integrated into what is already in the canvas, etc.

     

  • The PASeq that launched this thread does produce a very nice effect and controlling it sounds like a great plan.

    I have been working with SA for close to two decades and pretty much had no idea what to do about editing PASeqs - or for that matter probably 2/3s of what SA can do — so, this sort of loop back to SA for newbies is great! I seem to be a perpetual newbe! Working with SA is definitely like trying to tame a wild beast and the beast never does get totally tame. The wild energy feeds back tho and is rewarding in its own way.

    Encountering strategies like described above is eye opening and the guidance time and care taken, very appreciated!

  • The other thing that has come up recently that is somewhat related to this is that 'getting started' people experiment with the factory PASeq mosaic presets that use an image folder brush, and then want to use their own custom image folder with that preset.  And to do that you have to manually edit any paint steps in the PASeq that reference factory Brush folders to use your own custom brush folder instead. 

    You just run the appropriate File : Paint Synthesizer menu command to do that when editing a paint synthesizer preset.  But in a PASeq preset you need to first figure out which action steps are doing the image folder brush painting, play the action step to setup the Editor for it, then edit them individually by using that File : Paint Synthesizer menu command on them, then record your editing changes appropriately back into the PASeq by option clicking the appropriate red keyframe cells.

    Having a PASeq QuickEdit command to do it all automatically seemed like a useful thing to add (both for beginners as well as for people who know how to edit a PASeq but are in a hurry).  So we're in the process of adding that new feature as well today.

     

    Resizing a PASeq is another example where having QuickEdit commands to do it is a great time saver.  That one is already implemented in pre_V6.

    What i mean by that is somethign like adjusting the brush size of all of the individual paint action steps by some percent adjustment.  You would have to do it manually for each individual actions tep right now, then record those editign changes into the PASeq for each edited action step.

    I should point out that you can do it already automatically by working with the re-render PASeq checkbox option in the resize canvas menu. But you have to resize the canvas to run it.  The new PASeq QuickEdit commands just let you do it without changing the canvas.

     

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