User Experiments

I've been working on a certain technique with MSG evolution in Studio Artist using directed evolution, which is both fascinating and somewhat addictive. I then frequently take these frames into paint for touch up. I've finally collected vast numbers of frames and enough for quite a few videos, so the ambient video project is well under way. The videos will be submitted for exhibit, to various online video networks, and I'm interested in seeing whether ambient musicians or their labels might be interested in videos for their tracks.

Not every video will be 100% cg like this one... there will be video inter-mixed in others.

By way of background I'm a former video journalist, video editor, producer, documentary editor and writer. I was only in those related fields for about 15 years and then changed gears iin the 80's into graphic design, digital art, digital video and dabbling in video art. Because of work and other commitments I couldn't find time to stay with video art, that is until now and it's a welcome return.

I've got lots to learn and it's said years of learning ahead in SA, which I look forward to. At this point I've read some, but don't have much down in the way of process concerning video or some of the techniques I'd like to know more about.

That said, the process used for this series was well suited for the intent of these ambient videos, which by nature are, mostly a passive, background experience, and I wanted an animation but one that moved very slowly, like a painting that was evolving almost imperceptibly. What I did was manually export still frames from Studio Artist to disk and did the compositing in After Effects. One reason why is a feature I was familiar with which allows you to select the range of frames, import them into a new composition, and if you choose to in the settings you can have the frames overlap and then also dissolve to and from each other in two different ways.

So I have a few Studio Artist questions. Is importing frames and setting up the dissolves in a similar way possible in SA? Is there a way to set up a similar animation like this?

I've seen several references and am also curious to find more information about if I'm processing these frames in Paint Synthesizer or PAseq animation, is there a way and from what I hear there must, to take advantage of the bezier path layer(s) to in different ways process the raster layers or the canvas? Once I get to doing animations directly in SA, in MSG is there a way to take advantage of bezier paths there or once in PAseq animation timeline?

Oh I look forward to learning.