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Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects

I found this interesting article this morning, that implies that people find curved objects more comforting than sharp objects. Thought it might have some relation to strategies for abstracting images for the paint synthesizer or the vectorizer based on the kind of emotional reaction the artist intends to achieve in the final result. Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects Moshe Bar and Maital Neta Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School ABSTRACT—People constantly make snap judgments about objects encountered in the environment. Such rapid judgments must be based on the physical properties of the targets, but the nature of these properties is yet unknown. We hypothesized that sharp transitions in contour might convey a sense of threat, and therefore trigger a negative bias. Our results were consistent with this hypothesis. The type of contour a visual object possesses—whether the contour is sharp angled or curved—has a critical influence on people’s attitude toward that object.objects with a sharp-angled contour with subjective preference for the same objects when their contour was instead curved.
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here's a new approach to animation

Another post to inspire some inspiration. I thought the approach used to create the video below is pretty interesting and calls out for a Studio aArtist user to one up it with something better. Basically, they printed 4133 individual digitially processed video frames onto paper, then posted them in the real work and build a seond video using time lapse photography. The processed video on the paper printouts could be made much more interesting if it was generated using Studio Artist. And another idea would be to have it start to interact with the real world, like paint drip off the pages into the real world video. It's also pretty easy to create time lapse videos using studio artist and the iSight source mode with either an iSight camera or a firewire video camera taking the pictures. You can record a capture frame paseq action step and then add another intial action step in the paseq that just takes up time to build the time dealy in the frame captures.
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More than meets the eye

Last night we went to see a movie. I got a large drink which was served to me in one of those cool collectible Transformers cups. (I'm looking forward to the Transformers Movie debut..!) So far, the cup hasn't changed into anything different. At least not while I've been watching.
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Wet Paint Inspiration

I saw another image in the New York Times this morning that i wanted to reference here as some visual inspiration for creating new ways to make wet paint splatter. The photo below was taken by Librado Romero and was in the NYT on 6/30/07. I'm going to ignore the actual news context of the photo and focus on the wet paint splatter itself, which i think is really great. splash1.jpg There are a lot of different techniques you can use in Studio Artist to create wet paint and/or splatter effects. For hand painting, the multipen slop option is one fun way to add splatter to hand drawn paths that can simulate the effect of dribbling runny paint. Using the displacement effects in the Texture Synthesizer is a great way to simulate splatter as a post processing technique. I've recently been exploring some of the different options in the geodesic displacement ip op to create splatter effects in post processing. If you have other examples of wet paint or splatter effects you would like to see Studio Artist better emulate, feel free to post them here.
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Down the Silk Road and back again

Well, my wife and I have returned from our trip to China, and we've returned with 4 gigabytes of images for me to play with in Studio Artist. That's not counting 2 hours of video we recorded. Hopefully there's something in all that data that will be pleasing to the eye.
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The stylized graphics used in the sunday New York Times often serve as visual inspirations for me. I'll see a particular stylistic image used as the illustration for an article and wonder, now how could i create that particular stylistic effect in Studio Artist. Sometimes i figure it out, sometimes i decide i need to add an extra feature to create some aspect of the style. This sunday's NYT (6/24/07) is a good illustration of this. The illustration by Jeffry Smith below in 'the week in review' is great, i'd love to have a PASeq to create that particular style. I have some ideas but i think i might need to do a little coding as well since there is a lot going on in this particular illustration. 24schwartz_CA0.600.jpg Here's another one by Riccardo Vecchio from the editorial page by that i think is great. I think you could do a reasonable job of recreating this using the Vectorizer. The trick is that you have to apply the textures to the individual regions after the fact. One approach is to convert the vectorized canvas into the current region selection and then use regionization in the paint synth with region fill as brush pen mode and a path start option called 'Selection as Regions- all Levels'. You can use the paint synthesizer background texture to build the textures for the textured oriented gray regions you want in to the final canvas. 24opart_1.190.jpg This particular image also inspired me to create a new Region Effect for the Vectorizer to better emulate the particular style used in the illustration. Something to look forward to in the future. Feel free to share other illustration styles you find inspiring and would like to see emulated in Studio Artist, since i'm always looking for this kind of inspiration to direct our development efforts.
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Render blues...

Hi folks.... Just back from LA and a couple of fun shows with the Yohimbe Brothers.... When I left I set my 2 PPC desktops to render some longish Public Domain films for Artificial Afrika. Even with a fast computer, rendering a dense or complex P.A.S. can take days. My G4 tanked, my G5 is at 10K frames and counting....10K to go. My fingers are crossed but I may bail, an take whatI can get-if SA crashes, I lose the rendered up-to-now QT file. Hate when that happens!
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a creative buzz from this forum

So far I'm really excited to be hanging out with other Studio Artist users and seeing some of the amazing creations enabled by this fabulous application. I used to check the other SA forum once a week or so but hopefully I'll have the time to check in here daily.

This forum definitely is more conducive to sharing the results of our creative explorations. Hopefully I'll have something to post myself shortly.

Some of the videos people have posted have blown me away. Now I'm really curious whether I should try doing some videos in SA, although I never was that tempted before.

At first I was thinking the voting function was not cool but now that there's hundreds of canvases to look at under 'photos' (wish that label could be changed), maybe voting is a useful thing if you trust the wisdom of the crowd. Certainly when there's 100,000 canvases, it's going to be a problem to page through them linearly.

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MSG Evolver

MSG Evolver is a curious beast. I really like what it does but but how it goes about it. I am still not sure about the realtionship between the gradients and palettes and the final image. MSG is really worth playing around with and following the documentation examples because you can make good images.I have uploaded a three examples.
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It's often very tempting to just hit the action button and apply a particular paint preset or image processing effect to the entire canvas. But by working with the concept of selective application of focus of a particular effect you can achieve some really interesting results. The image below was created by combining together several different kinds of directed effect focusing techniques.



One typical effect is to center the viewers attention on a particular aspect of an image while blurring or diffusing the viewers attention at areas of the image you do not want them to concentrate on. Often this involves centering the object of interest and rendering it with sharp focus while progressively blurring the boundaries of the canvas. You could do this in your digital camera when taking a photo but it's also easy to add afterwards. There are a number of different Image Processing effects in Studio Artist that incorporate a border modulator which can be used to create this kind of effect. Adaptive Filter and Adaptive Convex Hull are 2 of my favorites for this kind of application. For the image above, i used the Adaptive Filter with the Border Modulation to blur the outer boundaries of the image while retaining focus at the center of the image. I then used the Canvas Image to Source Image menu command to load my modified image as the new source.

I also wanted to have the ability to selectively focus the various effects i wanted to use to create the final image. To do this i created a centered spherical selection mask that i could use with different image processing effects to selectively focus them in the center or at the boundaries of the canvas. You turn on the Mask popup to mask an image operation based on your current region selection, and you can use the region selection invert menu command to flip the focus from the center to the boundaries of the image with this kind of a selection mask.

I used the Sphere Multiplier image operation to create the centered spherical selection mask. I started by setting the current region selection to full off, then i set the Ip Source popup for the Sphere Multiplier Ip Op to Region Selection, and i set the Composite popup for the Ip Op to Replace Region Selection. Many people forget that you can use the current region selection as both the source and destination for any of Studio Artist's image operations, and this is a really powerful way to modify a region selection or to generate various mask shapes for things like selectively focusing processing effects.

One of the things i wanted to do was to apply a Gradient Lighting effect to the area of user focus in the center of the canvas while applying a Geodesic Warper melt effect to the boundaries of the image. It was easy to do this with the centered sphere selection mask i created using the steps above. This example is a simple one just involving centered focus but you can easily imagine how you could create selection masks based on positive and negative space or edge areas in your source image to selectively mask effects or to enhance the look of a final painting.
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In my sixty five years I have seen some changes. I was around when they first introduced Acrylic Paint. Every one but the brave was not going change to a New Media! Photography when introduced and even now has a black sheep relationship with the art world.I was thrilled and excited with the discovery of Studio Artist. I have a limited knowledge of computers and a fear of math. I have just recently begun to tinker with SA and I am completely overwhelmed with what appears to be an ultimate paint and draw computer program!Just started playing no goals yet...............
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Oh wow! How cool is this. With all respects to the DMN site, I'm very excited about this forum. Interested in seeing what people are working on and working with other folks to evolve my SA knowledge (which is woefully behind where I want it to be.) Excellent!
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Piggy Particles


Hi, here is a new video, lots of MSG (background layer) and MSG generation path starts along with Time Particles in the paint synth, the "Piggy" figure I made in ZBrush and then animated in Blender, with embedded alpha channel, then took into Studio Artist and made into several different kinds of Movie Brushes. Several layers composited together in Blender. Music made with Bespoke Synth and my Shenai. If anyone has any questions about how it was done I'd be happy to explain more.…

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Comments: 3

The one that got away


A capture of a PasEq playback (all I had left after a crash) I didn't save the over sized Paint Synth Presets that I was adjusting and testing... But I did save the PAsEq. This would be what…

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Thor Johnson commented on Thor Johnson’s status
"To clarify, I did not make this using 3 layers by using the Layers window in Studio Artist, each layer was processed seperately and then put together and exported as a movie in Blender."
Mar 11
Working with Source .png Images – Transparent Backgrounds via Studio Artist AI

Working with Source .png Images Turning the alpha channel on for transparent .png backgrounds When using .png source images with transparent backgrounds, you will need to set Canvas > Selection > Set to > Source Alpha and then Check Mask…

Jan 11, 2023
Dual Paint Mode Video Explainer via Studio Artist AI

Basics of the Dual Paint Mode, Concepts and How to Create Your Own Dual Paint Presets For More Information on Dual Paint please see this DUAL PAINT POST   For More Information DUAL PAINT POST

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Apr 5, 2022
Erasing the Canvas via Studio Artist AI

How to Erase the Canvas To erase the canvas choose the Eraser Icon at the top of the Interface or choose Canvas > Erase to See this Post for more detailed information on the canvas eraser options.  

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Apr 4, 2022
Preset Management Video via Studio Artist AI

Everything You Need to Know about Studio Artist Presets and Preset Management  

The post Preset Management Video appeared first on Studio Artist…

Apr 4, 2022
Resizing the Canvas via Studio Artist AI

Resizing the Canvas Please see this tip on Resizing the Canvas And how to Resize the Canvas for High-Resolution Print

The post Resizing the Canvas appeared first on…

Apr 4, 2022
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