Art Processing Sharing Blog
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.
Comments
If you morph between frames with no bezier curves recorded in the morph context, then you end up getting a linear fade between the images. So that would be one way to do the frame overlap and dissolve in Studio Artist.
Here's a tip on PAseq contexts, which includes some info on the morph context.
Here's a tip on creating a morph animation.
As always, thanks so much John.
Man, is there anything that hasn't been built into Studio Artist 4? All I can remember is one line from Dan Akroyd in a Saturday Night Live commercial spoof in the 70's - "it's a floor wax and a desert topping.."
It is not a SA solution but you could look into making a video with one image per frame. Then slow it down to the length you want and use Optical Flow blending to blend between frames. It will give you a similar look to the SA morph functions but has its own unique qualities.
The cool thing about the SA morph tool though is you can use the bezier curves "wrong" to force disparate parts of one image to blend into the next, i.e. bottom right of image A morphs into top left of image B.
I like what you're saying about using the bezier curves wrong to force a disparate blend, great idea. I might save this technique for a few best works since it sounds pretty time intensive.
I think I've more or less done what you've suggested with this first piece in After Effects; each image was exported from SA. You might tell me how Optical Flow is used if you have a chance. What I did in AE was to select all of the frames, then choosing import into composition there's a setting that allows you to overlap the frames and another setting that allows you to set the dissolve rate.
I use Motion not AE but there is a ton of overlap. All you did was create a crossfade from one image to another. What I am suggesting is, say you have 30 images, make a 1 second video of 30 frames I use Quicktime Pro 7 for this. Put that in AE and slow the 1 second video to 1% speed or something. Under the clip timing options should be frame blending options. Motion has None, Blending, Motion Blur, and Optical Flow. You'll have to poke around to figure out exactly how to do this in AE.
What's cool about Optical Flow is it assumes there is motion in a still frame, say a person running, and attempts to blend that motion only. But motion is just a difference between pixels from one frame to the next and a computer can only guess so when you present it with wrong information interesting results can occur. I used that technique to blend between images in this https://studioartist.ning.com/video/poppea-sketch . You see how rather than a simple cross dissolve elements of the first frame morph into the second frame and so forth.
HTH.
Excellent creative concept and implementation, thanks for sharing the technical information! I use Motion as well as AE so I will try out Optical Flow either way. Thanks again. Switching gears, I just came across a free app video called Pixel Conduit from a Finnish company, Lacquer. The studio version is $120. It's node based, and has plugins for AE, Motion, Final Cut X and Photoshop. Just because I always have to try new stuff I'll be checking it out to see if they have any similar tools, but I'm curious if anyone knows about it or the company. http://bit.ly/WK52Ad
Consider me both educated and inspired! There may be times I want to use a simple dissolve but of course this is fascinating. I may have to tweak settings as I go along. Lucas, thanks again!