Studio Artist News

Apocalypse Cow

2011-12-08T15:26:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Victor Ingrassia recently completed the visuals for a video made for Fin Records called "Apocalypse Cow". The video is associated with composer David Hahn's recent limited edition colored vinyl record release on Fin Records.

Victor had this to say about the project. "I used Studio Artist for all the animation. I captured the original source video in a wide range of resolutions; much of it small low quality web video. I liberally upscaled and enhanced these captures in Studio Artist in preparation for animation at 720p HD.

My toolset consisted of a mixture of preset and custom image operations, vectorizer and paint synthesizer patches. The finished animation includes a mixture of auto rotoscoping and hand auto drawing. I animated in a range of frame rates (from 6-30fps) to optimize the look and feel of different sections. I explored alpha for the first time in Studio Artist to create elements for compositing in Final Cut Pro.

It was an interesting challenge to create video for such a short piece. Great care was taken to not waste a frame and moving forward with confidence was critical."

This project lead to Victor being commissioned for a Fin Records music video, with an anticipated release date in Match 2012. Victor's demo reels showcase a wide variety of Studio Artist auto-rotoscope and paint animation styles, and are available for viewing on his web site. Victor also has a number of awesome Studio Artist generated video examples on his vimeo page.

Occupy Online Collection - A Study in Controlled Randomization

2011-12-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

Studio Artist user Tucker Stilley has put together an online gallery of his most recent experiments in controlled random generative art creation. The finished art gallery images are derived from working with collections of images randomly web spidered from online articles about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Tucker worked in tandem with his cybernetic collaborator Nguyn-9000 (aka Studio Artist) to put together this series of art prints.

Tucker uses Studio Artist's Gallery Show features to help him explore the possibilities of working with controlled generative randomization as a creative process. He generates a large number of art images using automated Gallery Show runs that process his web harvested topical imagery, and then culls through the results looking for keeper images. Tucker's end goal was a series of detailed giant prints, so the actual finished processed images are 60" wide.

Tucker has this to say about his recent experiments. "I have been using Studio Artist for almost a decade now and every day I am surprised, I haven't even scratched the depth of possibilities. I got very interested in Studio Artist's generative and random qualities when I became paralyzed. In this case, I became interested in the effect of custom presets applied to vast folders of images spidered off the web. The resulting composites were dreamy and freakish and called out for action.

If you've ever "tried" to make something random - but controlled, you'll know what I mean - it's hard work! "

Tucker talks more about this and other projects on his blog.

For more information on Gallery Show check out these Studio Artist tips.

Charis Tsevis in the News

2011-11-24T11:40:00.001-08:00

Studio Artist user Charis Tsevis's work was quite prominent online this fall in the aftermath of Steve Job's passing. Tevis's stunning Studio Artist generated photo mosaic imagery was featured in many Steve Jobs tribute articles.

The Greek Reporter featured Charis in an interview article that discussed his approach and techniques used to generate his artwork. Charis talks about his use of Studio Artist to build photo mosaic imagery and other visual effects, as well as his thoughts on being a digital artist in modern Greece.

History is the Art of Forgetting

2011-11-22T13:03:00.001-08:00

Studio Artist user Michael Wright is a special guest at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica on November 30th. The final evening in a series of presentations that take a look at high profile artists who broke boundaries and created new forms of art media. The discussion will center on EZTV's CyberSpace Gallery, one of the world's first galleries dedicated to computer art.

The evening also features the debut of a new video art piece by Esther Kiss, as well as the rarely seen Outside Looking In - One Last Visit With Timothy Leary. The 18th Street Arts Center is at 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA. The presentation begins at 8 pm on Wed, Nov 30.

Here's a link for more information on the presentation.

Here's a link to Michael's daily portrait virus project. Michael uses Studio Artist to create his daily self portraits. Here's a link to a previous Studio Artist news article that discusses a stack filtering project based on Michael's portrait virus images.

Deconstructed Faerie

2011-08-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Tucker Stilley (aka NewJack Rasputin) has recently completed an ipad picture book called 'Deconstructed Faerie'. All of the book's imagery was created using Studio Artist 4.

Haunting imagery mashed together with eerie original music make 'Deconstructed Faerie' a must have experience for the ipad. It was the official Winner of Best New Media at the Secret International Outdoor Arts and Film Festival, 2011.

For more information on 'Deconstructed Faerie', check out this site. Or you can purchase 'Deconstructed Faerie' here on the iTunes app store.

You can check out Tucker's main web site here. Tucker is also a member of the Studio Artist User Forum.

OSX 10.7 Lion Requires Studio Artist 4

2011-07-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

Apple Computer recently released it's new OSX 10.7 Lion operating system. Studio Artist customers running older versions of Studio Artist prior to version 4 need to upgrade to version 4 in order to run Studio Artist on Apple computers running OSX 10.7 Lion.

Lion no longer provides support for Rosetta emulation. So older versions of Studio Artist, such as Studio Artist 3.5, will not be able to run due to the lack of Rosetta support on OSX 10.7. If you have older copies of Adobe software or other old PPC compiled applications you will run into the same problem with these older applications as well when you try to run them on Lion.

Studio Artist 4 was designed to provide native support on intel computers as well as older PPC machines. Studio Artist 4 runs just fine on the latest OSX 10.7 Lion release. Studio Artist 4 will run native on Apple intel and PPC computers running OSX 10.4 through the latest 10.7.

Studio Artist 4 also now runs on Windows computers, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

If you haven't upgraded to the latest Studio Artist 4, you're totally missing out on all the latest developments. We added a ton of new features, speed enhancements, live interactive effect adjustment, time based visual effects, new dual-paint mode, integrated MSG editing, gallery show, the new user configurable workspace, and much much more. At the same time, all of your old custom Studio Artist presets will still open and run in Studio Artist 4. More detailed information on Studio Artist 4 is available here.

For more information on upgrading your older copy of Studio Artist to the latest Studio Artist 4, here's a link to our online store for upgrade purchases.

Digital Image Transfer : Creating Art With Your Photography

2011-06-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Ellen Horovitz has recently completed a new book titled 'Digital Image Transfer : Creating Art With Your Photography'. It is a guide to transferring digital images into alternative and mixed media art. The cover photo shown above was created using Studio Artist, which Ellen calls 'her favorite software program'.

The book expands on traditional photo transfer, taking it to an entirely new level using digital software techniques and a wide array of innovative materials and methods, including cocoa powder, Citrasolve, copper, and packing tape. Starting with traditional photos, digital files, and instant photo emulsions, Horovitz fashions 2D and 3D art pieces, showing readers how to use conventional processes and new exploratory techniques-even left-over materials-in the creation of meaningful photo art. Ellen discusses Studio Artist as well as other digital art programs in her book.

Ellen has a blog at Pixiq, and is a professor and director of graduate art therapy at Nazareth College of Rochester. More information on her new book is available here.

Matteland and "The Door to Tomorrow"

2011-05-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Skylar Skybase is currently working on building digital matte painting elements for an upcoming animated short film called "The Door to Tomorrow". The film is the story of a friendship between 2 shapes, and is a mixture of fantasy, a bit of comedy, and drama.

The final film will feature a large number of matte backgrounds digitally painted using Studio Artist. The matte paintings are then processed in Maya and turned into 3D environments for the animated characters to move around in. A short animation test called Matteland is available here that shows off several different Studio Artist generated multi-layer matte paintings that are used to build a series of 3D environments. The camera pan movements in Matteland work with the 3D mapped matte paintings to create the amazing sensation of moving through a painted 3D environment.

Skylar has posted an in-depth explanation of the work process that goes into creating his atmospheric matte paintings. He starts out using the paint synthesizer to paint in a source image using fully automatic painting. He then switches to manual hand painting using a Wacom pen and tablet to build additional atmosphere and detail into the final finished matte painting. The blog post also describes how he works with his original source images to break then up into several different layers that will later be used to build his 3D painted environments.

Sklyar's blog also has a number of different Studio Artist specific tagged posts, that detail additional paint projects as well as generative abstract MSG based imagery. Skylar especially loves the Inspire button in the Studio Artist 4 Evolution Editor.

Using Studio Artist to build 3D painted environments for animation or auto-rotoscoping is a very cool idea, and has a really unique visual look to it. I'm looking forward to checking out the evolution and completion of "The Door to Tomorrow".

John Anderson's Aluminum Art Print Installation

2011-04-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user John Anderson just recently completed a project using Studio Artist for an international corporate headquarters art installation located in Charleston, South Carolina. The finished prints are 65.7" x 48", and are printed on aluminum as opposed to paper or canvas.

I've noticed a trend recently with artists choosing to print directly on aluminum surfaces due to the unique visual qualities printing on aluminum surfaces can achieve. John had the following to say about his recent Studio Artist generated project.

"The nice thing about the aluminum is that it gives a three dimensional effect, and is very vibrant. I've not seen any paper--including the metallic--that comes anywhere close to the vibrancy of the prints. I'm not totally familiar with the process, as I have not yet been able to visit the lab. The results though are rather stunning."

"One of the challenges of working with the metal images is that the aluminum only comes in 48" width, so height had to be limited. Since standard photographic images aren't in formats that will come out to 72" x 48", or 96" x 48" when enlarged, my images turned out to be around 65.5" x 48". Another problem is that the reflective surface of the aluminum glossy presents very extreme lighting challenges. For this reason, I decided to go with a brushed aluminum that is not glossy for these. The images have a secure hanging system--a lock system where one piece fits on the wall and attaches to one on the frame--this holds secure and also prevents movement of the prints."

"My images are created using any standard photo. I try to use filters that don't reproduce the representational image--but tear it apart into individual pixels of color and texture. That way I can create abstractions that bear no resemblance to the original photograph. I very seldom retain any element of the forms in the original photographs. This is what excites me most about Studio Artist--it's like using the colors in a photo as a pallet. The computer screen literally becomes a canvas. With Studio Artist I don't feel like I'm manipulating a photograph, I feel like I'm creating a whole new piece of art. In a manner of speaking, I'm able to blur the lines between painting and photography."

John has a nice online gallery at imagesaccordingtojohn filled with beautiful Studio Artist generated imagery.

Exposed : The Art Project

2011-04-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user and composer/filmmaker Neal Fox is a partner in the multimedia collaboration, EXPOSED the Art Project, with painters Barry Gross and Viktor Safonkin, and photographers Adela Holmes and Presscott McDonald. Neil has been working with Studio Artist generated imagery for several different projects released by Exposed the Art Project.

The goal of EXPOSED is to bring awareness to various social issues and motivate people to get involved. With that in mind, the partners chose four themes for their first year’s work: Spirituality, Time and Chance, Metamorphosis and Social Commentary. Fox’s first video for EXPOSED, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," was deemed so important that the partners elected to post it on YouTube prior to any exhibit. As of today (4/5/11) that video has received over 105,000 views.

And in December 2010, his digitally enhanced work, "Life Sucks" (also created for the social commentary theme) won First Prize for Photography in "Through the Eyes of Love," an exhibit honoring World AIDS Day.

For more information on Exposed the Art project, check out this link. For more information on Neal, you can check out his web site here. One of Neals' recent Studio Artist generated films called Metamorphosis-Angel is available for viewing here.

Presenting Problems

2011-04-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Garrick Duckler has just released a series of Studio Artist generated films on Caversham Productions called "Presenting Problems." Garrick is a psychotherapist, and his films are directed at ways of thinking about, discussing, and understanding various problems presented in and as a result of therapy.

Studio Artist was used in the process of three of the short films in the compilation "Presenting Problems." In "The Eskimo," Studio Artist was used in creating the arctic landscape by shooting a live actor who was then rotoscoped and (with the help of particular types of eraser tools) given a frozen tundra atmosphere to inhabit. In "At the Movies," old movie stills were doctored using image processing in order create a various registers of flatness and depth put together in a manic-paced collage. In "The Grudge," hand-drawn characters were rendered using image processing and then placed against Victorian and Edwardian interiors using paint and texture synthesizers, giving the movie a Gothic setting but one which is populated by a host of monstrously neurotic characters.

The movies have been widely popular and have used as discussion pieces for training psychotherapists as well as enjoyed by people who just enjoy thinking about psychological questions. To find out more, please visit: www.presentingproblems.com

World Premiere of Chaconne + Studio Artist Visits Belgium

2011-02-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist animator Jean Detheux will have the world premiere of his new Studio Artist generated animated film"Chaconne" at the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois on February 20th.

Jean had this to say about his new film. "The film is an exploration of a different way to relate to film (and music) time and therefore, a different way to make that experience visible (to "share" it). In it, "events" come in a way that often precedes (and "continues") the actual moment in the music.

The exploration of the poetic space that can exist between images and music is at the heart of this piece. Between being a mere human metronome and almost ignoring the music, there is a sensitive space, requiring a difficult and dynamic balance in order to find/create a potential dialogue that begs to be made visible."

More information on the film showing is available here. A short web version can be seen here.

Studio Artist in Belgium

In March (14 to 18), Jean will be in Belgium for a very intensive week of teaching (40 hours in 5 days) at the "Conservatoire royal de musique de Mons" where he will work in tandem with his friend pianist/composer Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven (he teaches chamber music, and improvisation, at that school).

They will conduct classes of improvisation image-music, with a group of selected students from the music school as well as from the visual arts school "École supérieure des arts plastiques et visuels". Jean will feature Studio Artist as a part of his week long workshop.

Jean will also present a lecture opened to the public, likely on the origin of abstraction in ordinary perception, and the whole week will culminate, on Friday the 18th, in a two-part concert, first with the students and second, with Jean-Philippe.

Jean explains his week long workshop as follows. "This is, I believe, a first, having both music and visual arts students work together on the exploration of the relationship between images and music, I am really looking forward to it."

Quatuor Bozzini

No one can accuse Jean of being lazy, his recent schedule has been extremely busy. He also just finished a live concert with the Quatuor Bozzini playing to his "Daydream Mechanics V Sketch 3" piece. You can check out the rehearsal of this recent live concert here. Here's a second link to the actual live concert.

Year of the Fish DVD Now on NetFlix and Amazon

2011-02-08T11:05:00.001-08:00

Today marks the official release for the 'Year of the Fish' DVD. 'Year of the Fish' is a feature length documentary created by writer and director David Kaplan. The film was completely animated using Studio Artist, and allowed David to make a feature length animated film with a fraction of the budget required for traditional manual rotoscoping techniques that require manual drawing by a large team of professional animators over an extensive period of time (like the movies produced by filmmaker Richard Linklater).

In the DVD audio commentary, filmmaker Kaplan offers a brief history of rotoscoping in the movies and explains why he chose to adapt the ancient Chinese version of "Cinderella" to modern-day Chinatown. He says that rotoscoping allowed him to "Situate the film halfway between the gritty underbelly of reality ... and this fairy tale of a story where magical things happen." Using a small crew and hand-held digital cameras, Kaplan and his cinematographer Adam Silver were able to shoot extensively and quickly on the actual streets of Chinatown.

David mentioned to me that the DVD also includes some extras, including an early animation test that he thinks 'kinda looks better than the finished film in retrospect'. David has mentioned several times to me that in hindsight he wishes he would have made the visual look of the film much more loose and painterly, pushing boundaries and taking better advantage of Studio Artist's ability to abstract visual imagery in an infinite variety of different styles.

The DVD also includes a series of before and after (original video vs rotoscoped video) example shots. I find these examples very interesting, because you can see that David was very adept at using Studio Artist to colorize the original video footage, giving it an visual glow and emotional impact that is completely not there in the original raw DV footage.

One trick that David made extensive use of to achieve this was using Studio Artist's Color Palette Map image operation effect to artificially colorize his original footage. David started with impressionist paintings that he liked the visual look and coloring of. He then used Studio Artist's ability to automatically generate a color palette from an image to build specific color palettes derived from the paintings he like the look of. He was then able to use those automatically generated color palettes along with the Color Palette Map ip op effect to recolorize the original footage as a part of his video processing Paint Action Sequences.

The great thing about the film in my opinion is that David was always able to make the animation work to help convey the storyline and emotion impact he was trying to achieve as a director. The animation always enhances the film, as opposed to some movies where extensive visual effects are a distraction from the story line (or serve to cover up a lack of story line). It was amazing to watch the film on a big screen in a large theatre when i was able to see it for the first time in Honolulu, the visual impact of the film on a large screen was stunning. But the cool thing about the DVD is all of the extras you get with it, including the additional footage and director's commentary.

You can now find Year of the Fish on Netflix here.

If you want to purchase a copy of the DVD, it is available on Amazon here.

For more information on the making of Year of the Fish, check out this earlier blog post.

Here's a link to the film's trailer on David's web site.

Starry Messenger

2011-01-30T06:31:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Jean Hauptman used Studio Artist to create the promotional artwork for the world premier of 'Starry Messenger', which is a play premiering at the Theatre of the New City in NYC January 27 through Febuary 13. More information on the play along with performance show times is available here.

Getting Physical with your Digital Prints

2011-01-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Mark Gorden recently turned me on to a number of approaches he's been investigating that mix digital art imagery created in Studio Artist with more traditional hand work to create and manipulate the final physical art print.

Mark starts by creating a finished piece of digital art in Studio Artist. He then makes an inkjet print of the artwork, with the goal of using the actual inkjet print as a transfer sheet. So the color on the inkjet print is transferred to another media, like arches watercolor paper. Mark actually uses Purell hand sanitizer to facilitate the image transfer.

Mark has also investigated encaustic painting. So he starts by laying a giclee print of a Studio Artist generated artwork on a board. The board is then hand worked with pastels, and texture on the physical piece of artwork is built up by adding encaustic. Encaustic is painting with a mix of beeswax and damar resin, heated as you paint. This is apparently how Jasper Johns did his target prints.

Mark has a lot of experience in traditional etching and lithography, but doesn't currently have access to a print workshop and wanted to work from home. His research to build these unique approaches to generating physical prints at home derived from digital imagery generated in Studio Artist involved a lot of trail and error, and in my opinion are a great success and should be an inspiration to others. You can see more of Mark's Studio Artist generated imagery on his website.

Studio Artist in MacLife Magazine

2011-01-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

David Biedny recently presented a really nice review of Studio Artist 4 in Mac Life magazine. We'd like to thank David for recognizing that Studio Artist is 'a new kind of artistic software that brings something truly unique and innovative to the table'.

David also loves Particle pen brushes and the amazing possibilities of the built-in-vectorizer. As well as 'an entire programmable set of Photoshop-style image-processing filters that far supersede those found in Photoshop'.

The real strength of Studio Artist is that it's an entire full featured environment for creating an unlimited range of different visual effects. Both for still artistic imagery as well as video animation and video effects. So it was refreshing to see David pick up on the synergistic power of Studio Artist's different range of visual effect and digital paint tools and how they can work together to create amazing organic looking results that are really very unique and innovative.

Mac Life magazine has always been a great resource for Mac computer users over the many years they have been in existence, and we're grateful they found the time to help support us with a nice review of Studio Artist 4.

Year of the Fish Headed for DVD and NetFlix Release

2011-01-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

The 'Year of the Fish' DVD will be officially released on February 8th. The DVD contains a director's commentary, an early Studio Artist animation test, and a series of before/after rotoscoping shots in addition to the film itself.

'Year of the Fish' is a full length Studio Artist animated feature film created by Studio Artist user and writer/director David Kaplan, which was first released at Sundance a few years ago and has won many awards and critical acclaim. We featured an interview with David that focused on the making of 'Year of the Fish' last year on the anniversary of it's Sundance Film Festival premiere.

As i mentioned then, what i really love about 'Year of the Fish' is that its a beautiful example of what a single individual can achieve working with Studio Artist and it's automatic rotoscoping and paint animation capabilities. David used earlier versions of Studio Artist running on older Mac PPC machines in the making of his feature length animated film, so with all of the new advanced features in Studio Artist 4 today there's even more artistic possibilities for budding filmmakers looking to visually differentiate themselves.

What is so outstanding about 'Year of the Fish' is that the visual animation is artistically used to advance the mood of the film and never gets in the way of the storyline itself. It's a brilliant example of using artistic visual processing to enhance the experience of viewing a film, as opposed to many effects driven films of today where the storyline is an afterthought to mindless big budget effects presentation.

Here's a link to the film trailer on David's web site.

Visual Abstract Live in Houston

2011-01-08T14:57:00.001-08:00

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux's new 3 movement animation piece "Visual Abstract" will be presented tonight in Houston with live musicians. The piece is a part of the Musiqa and Aurora Picture Show, which explores the boundary between reality and fantasy with an innovative mixture of live music and film. The show is from 7:30-10 pm at Zilkha Hall, the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, in Houston Texas.

Jean is also busy preparing for another concert with the Bozzini Quartet, which will be the first presentation of "Daydream Mechanics V Sketch 3" with live music. The concert will be presented in Montreal at the "Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur," on February 9. For more information check out this link.

Studio Artist 4.03 Update

2010-12-27T16:24:00.001-08:00

By now Santa should have delivered download links to all Studio Artist 4 customers for the latest Studio Artist 4.03 application update.

Santa's Elves have also been busy at work on a new set of Paint and Vectorizer presets specifically designed for Studio Artist 4.03. More information on the new 4.03 preset collections along with associated download links are available here.

If you are a Studio Artist 4 customer and you are still running a version 4 build prior to the 4.03 application update, you should contact techsupport AT synthetik DOT com so that we can resend you your 4.03 application file update download.

If you are still running Studio Artist 3.5 or an even older version, now is the time to upgrade to Studio Artist 4. If you don't yet own a copy of Studio Artist, Studio Artist 4 is the premier digital art software tool and is now available for Windows as well as Apple computer users.

Quick Overview of Studio Artist 4 Features

Studio Artist 4 is the next generation of Studio Artist digital art, image and video processing software. With version 4 we’ve now opened up the Studio Artist experience to Windows as well as Mac users. Mac users will be pleased that version 4 is a universal binary application with faster native processing speed on both Intel and PPC Macs. Windows users will be pleased that they can now run Studio Artist on their Windows computers. Studio Artist 4 is compatible with Apple computers running OSX 10.4 through the latest OSX 10.6, and with Windows computers running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Studio Artist 4 still provides the same graphics synthesizer editing metaphors, intelligent visual processing and smart automatic drawing capabilities developed in previous versions of Studio Artist. But the underlying code base was extensively rewritten in version 4 to allow for support of existing features while also providing a solid platform for future development. We also added a ton of new features, enhancements, workflow and speed optimizations.

The new Studio Artist 4 workspace is much more modular in nature and can be custom configured depending on your particular workflow. You can dock and reposition your working palettes and toolbars anywhere at the edges of the main workspace. Palettes can be tab nested on top of each other to conserve screen space. Palettes can also be floated outside the main workspace, which is very useful in dual monitor and live performance setups. You can switch on the fly while working between 4 different user configurable workspace memories and a full screen display mode. Multiple levels of undo are also now supported.

Studio Artist 4 provides enhanced functionality and new features while maintaining compatibility with all of your old Studio Artist presets. The factory preset collection has also been significantly expanded, providing thousands of new presets to explore and modify. A new Favorites preset toolbar allows you to custom organize sets of working favorites presets in a space saving moveable toolbar. The new integrated help browser allows you to document, organize, and access presets via custom html help pages.

Studio Artist 4 includes new real time interaction features. Loop Action allows you to switch between different processing presets on the fly while they run in a live processing loop. Effect and paint parameters can also be live adjusted while Studio Artist is auto painting or processing in loop action. Paint Synthesizer Time Particles take on a whole new life with live editing while they are painting. Live video capture can also be incorporated into loop action processing along with live interactive editing for live visual performance or live video synthesis. The new Gallery Show features allow you to build custom free running art shows or automatically generate an infinite range of new presets and/or art images.

The Paint Synthesizer now has 500 adjustable parameters and is capable of an even wider range of potential styles and effects. Hybrid vector-raster paint effects can now be created, like painting a vector region that then has it's edges melted or smeared with water using a single paint preset. The new Live Extend path shape option allows for wild dynamic paint styles with physics based behavior. Photo mosaic, movie brush, and paint regionization features have been enhanced to expand your creative potential. The new Dual Paint operation mode allows you to combine digital painting and live image processing together to create dynamic organic paint presets as well as amazing interactive visual effects.

The Paint Synthesizer and Vectorizer now provide direct anti-aliased vector drawing and vector output. Vector files can be output to eps, pdf, or svg vector file formats for resolution independent output. Bezier paths can be embedded in a paint preset and then animated over time, creating dynamic animation or cross hatching effects. Bezier path editing for creating morph or warp effects has been streamlined for faster workflow.

The old Layer and Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) timeline functionality have been integrated into a single new PASeq timeline editor. PASeq batch processing features allow for enhanced professional workflow when auto-rotoscoping multiple movie files. The new Movie Layer features allow for Quicktime movie files to be embedded in multiple canvas layers when building animation effects or doing manual touchup to individual movie frames.

The Image Operation effects have been extensively enhanced and expanded. New intelligent Image Operation effects like Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass effects can now directly generate Bezier paths in addition to raster processing effects. The new intelligent path generation features can be combined with the infinite variability of the Paint Synthesizer’s drawing engine to create an endless range of different art styles and processing effects limited only by your imagination.

The new Temporal Image Processing operation mode provides a number of new time based image processing effects. These new temporal effects can be used for video processing. They can also be used to generate static images from video sequences that encapsulate the motion in a video sequence into a single static image. They can also generate a static panorama view based on the video camera’s panning and movement in a scene. Slit scan temporal effects can be used to expand, contract, extract or remove motion from a scene as well as create amazing looking visual effects.

Much of the old MSG Evolver modular image processing editing capabilities are now accessible directly in version 4 via the new MSG Advanced Editor and MSG Evolution palettes. You can use directed evolution to generate an infinite variety of different abstract procedural art images as well as image and video processing effects without delving into the technical aspects of MSG editing. There are now over 500 MSG processors available that can be combined together for constructing custom modular image processing effects. MSG presets can also be used to expand the Paint Synthesizer's capabilities through the use of MSG source brushes, brush load processing, path start, and path shape generators.

More information on Studio Artist 4 can be found at the Studio Artist Tips site.

How to Get Studio Artist 4

The list price for Studio Artist 4 for new customers is $399. There is special upgrade pricing for existing Studio Artist customers. For more information on purchasing Studio Artist 4, here's a link to our online store.

Studio Artist 4 Information Resources

In addition to the 551 page User Guide pdf that ships with Studio Artist 4, there's a ton of on-line tutorial and information resources available to learn more about the vast range of Studio Artist features and special effect capabilities.

If you haven't checked out the Studio Artist User Forum, you should really do so. It's a great place to ask Studio Artist related questions and receive answers from Synthetik Software as well as other expert Studio Artist users. There's also a photo gallery of user artwork created in Studio Artist, as well as a video gallery. New paint and effect presets from Synthetik Software and from other Studio Artist users are available for download from the forum. You can also construct your own custom home page and Studio Artist blog if you wish to. You can access the Studio Artist User Forum here.

The Studio Artist Tips site provides online documentation, getting started and tutorial tips for Studio Artist 4. You can access the Studio Artist Tips site here.

The new Studio Artist Daily Effects blog highlights a different Studio Artist effect or feature everyday. Each effect or feature is explained in detail, and you can ask questions via the comments section for additional clarification. The new daily effects blog is available here.

The Studio Artist Users Showcase is available on Vimeo and highlights different Studio Artist processed video effects and animation. You can access the Studio Artist Users Showcase on Vimeo here.

Studio Artist Visits Ko Lanta

2010-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

Many people dream of traveling the globe with a powerbook, taking in the exotic sights and creating digital art on the go. Studio Artist user Lee Roskin has been living that dream for several years now.

Lee and his wife have been extensively traveling throughout Asia and the Pacific, and are currently on the beautiful island of Ko Lanta in southern Thailand. Lee runs Studio Artist on his MacBook Pro while sitting at the beach or in his Bali-style bungalow (which comes with free wireless), creating abstract animations with synthesized music backdrops.

Lee has been actively involved in digital video and animation production since the early 80s, when he first started using a Commodore Amiga 100 with an old program called DeLuxe Paint. Later, he got into a video system called Music Visions, using it to make over 250 hours of video recordings. His realtime video performance system used 3 Amiga Computers, 2 genlocks, a video digitizer, 2 Visual Aurals, and a video camera for video feedback purposes.

Eventually Lee got into Mac computers during the Power PC era and started using Studio Artist. In the last few years he has been making videos with Studio Artist in conjunction with Adobe Premiere for non linear editing.

Lee says, "From the beginning, I used Techno music and attempted to match the video with the music in Psychedelic Lightshow fashion. With Studio Artist, I make clips of about one minute using MSG's (often multiple times) and these are sequenced and manipulated in Premiere with effects, layers, opacity. The Techno music (Ambient, Industrial, Trance) goes well with the electronic nature of the video. When I have about one hour of about 6 videos, I burn them to DVD. I'm working on the 8th series of DVD now."

Lee recently posted a short except from one of his trance inspired abstract animations to vimeo. I've seen some of Lee's finished DVDs, and they are a really nice combination of psychedelic MSG derived abstract visual animation combined with some great techno music.

I traveled through southern Thailand many years ago, so i get a big personal kick out of seeing Studio Artist running on Lee's powerbook at Pra Ae Beach in Ko Lanta. I also thought that Lee's story would be inspiring to Studio Artist users, both young and old. It's fascinating how technology has advanced over the years so that animation work that required massive amounts of physical hardware to pull off in the past can now be generated on the go with a small portable computer (and Studio Artist) while traveling the world.

New Blog for Studio Artist Effect Ideas

2010-10-16T18:22:00.000-07:00

I've started a new personal art blog at studioartist.posterous.com that provides information on creating different kinds of artistic effects using Studio Artist.

The goal is to provide a forum to quickly post short tutorial tips. The emphasis is more on 'how to create a specific art example' kinds of posts, as opposed to the more technical reference oriented posts at the Studio Artist tips site.

This new blog is just getting started, but over time i hope it will build into another useful information resource for Studio Artist users.

Also, don't forget to check out the main Studio Artist User Forum at studioartist.ning.com. The forum always has some kind of interesting art related discussion going on, and is an excellent place to ask a question if you are stumped on how to do something in Studio Artist, or just want to meet and hang out with other Studio Artist users. The User Forum is a complete social web 2.0 destination, so you can make you own personal home page with it's own integrated blog posts, post your own Studio Artist generated art, and check out other users's posted art and movie projects created with Studio Artist. There's also a preset sharing group that provides ongoing access to new Studio Artist presets.

Anyone specifically interested in animation or movie processing using Studio Artist should also check out the new Studio Artist User's Showcase at vimeo. If you are a Studio Artist animator and have some of your work on vimeo, pleas join the new showcase and cross post your Studio Artist generated animations or movie processing effects to the showcase for others to share.

Paper Cup to Heaven

2010-10-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

'Paper Cup to Heaven' is a short film created by Studio Artist animator Barbara Carroll that was recently accepted into the HDFest in Portland Oregon taking place this December 2010. The short film deals with loss and the fragility of life. More information on the film and show times can be found on Barbara's web site.

Barbara is an award-winning director, animator, and video game designer. You can check out the trailer for Paper Cup to Heaven here.

Ellen Horovitz's Media Manipulations

2010-10-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Ellen Horovitz has recently been blogging about different approaches to working with or subverting various kinds of digital printer media to achieve different analog style artistic effects. One recent post discusses a low cost approach to generating digitally printed transfers onto substrates that emulates the look of old Polaroid 669 film at a much lower cost. Another post describes using Sheer Heaven ink jet paper with color laser printing to achieve the look of Fuji analog film.

There's a long history of experimentation with different printer inks, papers, transparency materials, subverting their normal prescribed uses to achieve different artistic effects. A willing nature to experiment is the key for this kind of work, trying out different combinations of materials and printing techniques and noting what combinations work or not for your particular stylistic interests. Ellen likes the look of analog film, but the price is prohibitive for her students and some of her experimental techniques can achieve the same kind of analog print aesthetic looks at a fraction of the cost of more traditional approaches to generating the print.

Dr Horovitz is the Director of Graduate Art Therapy at Nazareth College in Rochester. She's also finishing up a new book that will feature some of her recent experiments working with Studio Artist.

Charis Tsevis's Digital Styling

2010-10-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

Peraformi recently posted an article on Studio Artist user Charis Tsevis. In it he talks about his fascination with the concept of 'media mosaics', relating the notion of complexity in photo mosaic imagery to chaotic systems. He also talks about his work designing Studio Artist generated photo mosaics during the Obama 08 campaign for the 'Designing Obama book.

Charis is a big user of the paint synthesizer movie brush feature in Studio Artist for constructing his stunning photo mosaic work.

I'm also very curious to see how he will use the new Stretch2 Source Brush feature in the upcoming Studio Artist 4.03 release after viewing the top illustration he made for the publication RAM depicting a media interconnected businessman. The new Stretch2 Brush Type used in conjunction with a movie brush allows for innovative new kinds of photo mosaic imagery where the individual sub-image elements of the mosaic can twist and flow while following a paint path.

John Neel's Studio Artist Explorations

2010-09-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user John Neel is a fine art photographer who also teaches at Nazareth College in Rochester New York. He also is a contributor to a new digital photography blog called Pixiq just announced at Photokina in Cologne. Here's a link to a recent article he posted there on working with Studio Artist.

John is currently finishing up a digital photography book that will include some sections devoted to working with Studio Artist. More on John's upcoming book when the publication schedule gets finalized.

John's web site is at jngallery.com. He also has an online gallery at thestudiowall.com.

No Man's Land

2010-08-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Scottish/Burmese composer and vocalist Fiona Soe Paing, in a collaboration with New Zealand based Studio Artist animation artist Zennor Alexander, perform the surreal live cinema show No Man's Land, featuring experimental electronica, original animation and live vocals, at the Roxy Art House in Edinburgh on Sunday August 29th. (more info)

Zennor's latest animation called "Tah Stin Koh Mpor" uses quite a bit of Studio Artist generated animation, and has a really interesting and unique visual style. You can check out this animation along with other examples of Zennor's Colliderscope work here.

Colliderscope combines off-world, skeletal electronica, live vocals and surreal storybook animations in their ethereal live cinema performance and DVDs. With vocals in Burmese, English, and invented "No Man's" language, Colliderscope explores the space between dreaming and waking, lost identities and found objects, where meaning is created from random events, and definition from the blurring of boundaries. Zennor and Paing's Colliderscope project also had a successful new DVD launch recently in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Stack Filtering Portrait Images

2010-08-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

The image above is an example of stack filtering a series of painted portrait images. The individual painted portraits were generated in Studio Artist by artist Michael Wright, and are documented in his ongoing personal portrait virus blog.

The Studio Artist generated image shown above is an example of stack filtering 197 individual painted portraits used as input to a stack filtering process. This particular stack filtering process generates a normalized average of all of the individual painted portraits. So in some sense you could think of it as being the 'generic' self portrait of Michael (based on the series of painted self portraits he created which were used as input to the stack filtering process).

Another way to view this particular stack filtering effect is that it acts as a kind of visualization tool that allows you to visualize various properties of the set of input images feed into it. This is just one of an infinite variety of potential stack filtering effects. We will explore how it was created as well as different variations on the mechanics of stack filtering below.

What is Stack Filtering?

Stack filtering is an approach to building artistic imagery by processing a series of individual images (the stack) as input to some kind of algorithmic processing effect that generates a single output image. Multiple images in, one image out. I think stack filtering can produce some amazing effects that are quite unique from what you may be familiar with for creating digital art, so we'll be discussing the whole process of stack filtering below in detail.

We recently discussed a specific example of stack filtering in a previous news post.

I've been told that some people find the 'stack' terminology confusing, so just think of the stack as being a folder of images if that makes visualizing the process easier. The key point to get is that you are using a set of multiple images as an input to some kind of processing effect that will take those multiple image inputs, process them in some way, and then output the result as a single processed output image.

Normal canvas layering could actually be thought of as a kind of stack filtering, so there's an example that everyone is familiar with. The 'stack' metaphor is much more literal when you think about a stack of layered images. However, the kinds of processing effects used for layer compositing are rather limited, just % mix and the composite operation itself. And the composite effects are sequential from image to image, 2 images in and one image out in series through the individual layers.

Stack filtering is different from layers in that you can have an arbitrary number of input images to the stack filtering algorithmic process. And the range of potential processing algorithms is dramatically expanded over simple layer mix and composite operations.

Most stack filtering processes are also non-real time, so you setup the stack filtering effect and then wait for the output to be generated. The time to generate the processed effect could be almost instantaneous or could take several minutes to run depending on what you are doing and how many individual images are used as input to the stack filtering process.

My initial conception of the stack filtering concept involved taking a temporal image processing effect and using a stack of arbitrary images as input to the temporal or time-based image processing effect. Temporal image processing effects are designed to process movie files. They different from normal image processing effects (which can also be used to process movie files), because they use multiple movie frames as input to the temporal processing effect.

If you are processing a movie file with a normal image processing effect you are processing a single input frame to generate a single output frame. Temporal image processing used multiple input frames to generate a single processed output frame.

Here's an example of an early stack filtering experiment I tried, using a folder of random graffiti images to build the image stack, and then using a temporal motion reduction filter to process the stack of graffiti images.

So this initial notion of stack filtering is an example of subverting a processing effect. Taking some normal process, and turning it on it's head, or twisting it around and using it in a different way than it was normally intended to be used. In this particular case, rather than using a movie file of sequential frame images from a video as input to a temporal image processing effect, you build a movie file from an arbitrary collection of individual images and then use this 'stacked image' movie file as input to the temporal processing effect.

The temporal processing effect will think that the set of individual images you used to build your stacked image movie are sequential frames in a video. And will try to process them accordingly. So if the temporal processing effect is based on computing motion from frame to frame, it will try to do so, but using your set of unique frame images that are not based on normal video.

Relationship to Movie Brushes

Studio Artist users who have worked with movie brushes or with building photo mosaic effects from movie brushes should be familiar with the concept of converting a folder of images into a movie file. The details of how to do this are described in this Studio Artist tip on building a movie brush to create a photo mosaic effect.

The same custom movie brush used as the basis for building a photo mosaic image could be used as a source movie within Studio Artist to generate stack filtering processing operations. In both cases a series of individual image files in a folder are converted into a single movie file that acts as a container for the set of images. The set of images encapsulated in the movie file are then used to create an artistic effect.

The same artistic decisions used to compose a set of images for creating a photo mosaic effect also apply to building a set of images for stack filtering effects. The images could be totally disparate with no specific interrelationships. Or they could be specifically chosen to relate in some way. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve artistically. Your initial decisions about which images to use will affect the output of the stack filtering process.

Stack filtering at some level is all about exploring the similarities or differences of the individual images used to create the stack. It's also different from photo mosaic effects in that the specific ordering of images in the stack is going to influence the output of the processing effect for most stack filtering operations. That is typically not the case for photo mosaic image generation based on the use of movie brushes.

Creating the Generic Self Portrait

As mentioned above, the stack filtering example shown at the top of this post can be thought of as the generic portrait from Michael's self portrait virus project. Here's a slightly different stack filtering variation of this particular effect.

The effect was generated by using a temporal image processing effect available in Studio Artist 4. It's also based on using a spatially normalized set of images for building the image stack. What this means is that Michael's individual painted portraits were inverse warped to spatially map to a specific 'standard' portrait. The standard portrait was just one of the self portraits that was chosen to be used as the standard. All of the other individual portraits were then inverse warped to spatially match the feature positioning in the standard portrait.

So, there are 2 different components to building this particular stack filtering effect. A source movie was first constructed from the original series of Michael's self portraits. This movie was then used as a source movie in Studio Artist for the inverse warp processing. Each frame in the source movie was inverse warped to match the standard portrait. The set of inverse warped portraits was then used as the set of source images for stack filtering.

Of course you don't have to perform the spatial normalization step to generate stack filtering effects. The example below shows the same stack filtering time based avering effect used to create the generic portrait at the top of the post, but using the original portraits as opposed to the spatially normalized portrait stack.

Note that there are similarities and differences between this stack filtered image and the one at the top of this post. Again, if you think about the stack filtering operation as being a visualization tool, then this processed image tells us something about Michael's set of self portraits. It tells us that on average they do tend to be centered. It also tells us something about the shape of a head.

But the details of the facial relationships between the individual self portraits is lost. Adding the additional spatial normalization processing lets us examine those details as a part of the stack filtering process. For example, the image below shows a different stack filtering effect applied to the entire stack of normalized portraits.

Running the same stack filter effect using the original portrait images generates the very different image shown below.

Both images are interesting. Whether you choose to use some kind of spatial normalization as a part of your personal stack filtering process is really a function of what you are trying to achieve.

For many applications of stack filtering effects a spatial normalization processing stage is not necessary. For the particular case of working with Michael's painted self portraits as input to the stack filtering effect and what processing effects i was trying to achieve, spatial normalization was very useful because it enabled me to focus on features of the facial portraits and the inter-relationships between facial portraits as opposed to focusing on the variations of where the faces are positioned, which is what the stack filtering of the original portrait stack focuses on examining.

Building the Inverse Warp Normalized Stack

A single step paint action sequence (PASeq) was used to do the inverse warp processing. The PASeq used an Inverse Warp Context action step to perform the inverse warp processing.

The standard portrait image shown above was used as the first frame of the source movie for processing. A set of bezier curves were drawn around the features of interest. For this particular experiment a very simple set of marker paths were used to define the face normalization. A bezier path was drawn around each eye, the mouth, and the overall head. So 4 bezier paths are used for each frame in the source movie. They are recorded as a series of keyframes for the single inverse warp context action step in the PASeq timeline.

It's easy to use Studio Artist's bezier editing features to do the frame by frame bezier curve editing to build the inverse warp keyframes. I used the source onion skin transparency feature as an aid in editing the individual curves from frame to frame. The image below shows the edited set of 4 bezier curves used for the inverse warp keyframe for a frame image different than the initial standard frame image.

Inverse Warping is a specific kind of warp operation that matches each subsequent frame to the initial frame. So the bezier curve positions in the first frame define the standard positioning and the curves in subsequent frames along with their associated image feature areas will be warped back to the standard positions. This is the inverse from how a normal warp works. Inverse Warping is a new feature in Studio Artist 4 that makes it very simple to perform this kind of spatial normalization effect.

Studio Artist 4 uses Context action steps to perform actions such as warping, morphing, spatially variant filtering. The Context action steps can store references to specific image or movie files as well as sets of bezier curves whose movement is used to define the warp or morph operations. This new approach to warping and morphing is much easier to use than the old Timeline Animation Operation mode approach in earlier versions of Studio Artist that worked with the old Layer Timeline.

For More Information

Stack filtering is a powerful new approach to building artistic processing effects. I hope this detailed post will get you thinking about how to use stack filtering to create your own artwork in Studio Artist.

For more information on my personal explorations with stack filtering Michael Wright's portrait virus imagergy check out this portrait virus mutations blog. More information on Michael's portrait Virus project can be found here.

Studio Artist 4 has a wide range of different temporal image processing effects. Here's a news post that provides an overview of the temporal processing effects. For more detailed information on working with temporal image processing effects check out this tip.

Stacked Mutations from Mali

2010-08-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Dennis Miller recently corresponded with me regarding a new project he's been working on. It involves a variation of a technique i've also recently been exploring, one i call stack filtering.

Dennis spent six months in Africa this spring he chronicled in his trip blog, primarily in Ghana, but he also spent some time traveling in Mali. Dennis's project involves taking a series of photographs from his trip to Mali, all men's faces, then mix/merge/blend/stack/compositing them with other photographs of various elements from the Mali African culture. Those could be images of a sandy yard, brick wall, cloth pattern, etc. Dennis is working with Studio Artist to do some of the compositing and image processing, but has also been exploring with merging disparate images using HDR programs.

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, HDR stands for high dynamic range. There are a number of different software programs that can be used to combine multiple exposures of a single scene into a high dynamic range image. So you expose one image for the shadows, another for the highlights, etc, then combine them together to create the HDR image.

Now the whole point of my portrait virus mutation project involves stack filtering sets of disparate images using time based temporal processing algorithms. Even though the images being processed are not successive frames of video, but are arbitrary stacks of images. If the stack terminology throws you think of the stack as being a folder of images. Dennis is doing something very similar with his approach of subverting HDR image recombination algorithms by feeding them disparate imagery rather than multiple exposures of the same scene.

Dennis was very influenced by the cultural influences of Mali, very different than what he was exposed to during his stay in Ghana. "We were struck by this amazing environment, with its traditional colors (indigo is a natural dye that is used in many styles of art work), the browns and yellows of the landscapes, the abstract patterns in the weaving, the Muslim architecture (the mosque at Jenne is the largest all mud building in the world and nearly every town we visited had its own "replica"), the many, many ethnic groups (Fulani, Bambara, Taureg, etc) and each of cultural icons... So many factors and such a rich experience.

I took a bunch of pictures during the trip and when I got home, I decided I would do a "photo art" series using a number of men's portraits blended with images of the different cultural elements, be they simply the indigo color, the texture of a brick wall or a mud mosque, a weaving pattern of a certain ethnic group... you get the idea. I also wanted to partially obscure the faces to indicate some of the mystery and remoteness of the people.. such was our experience."

Dennis's plan is to put together a series of 10 final images for presentation at a variety of venues. He's also interested in exploring some less-common printing methods to create the final images for exhibition. So it will be fascinating to see how his current stack filtering project evolves.

NY Counterpoint in London

2010-08-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

Jean Detheux's latest film 'NY Counterpoint' will be appearing in the London International Animation Festival on Saturday September 4th. This Studio Artist animated film appears in the International Programme 8 : Abstract Showcase. A web version of the film is available for viewing here.

The film features music by Steve Reich arranged for tape and piano, recorded and performed by Belgain pianist Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven.

NY Counterpoint was also featured at the Melbourne International Animation Festival and the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema.

Jean has also been busy lately preparing new material for live visual performance that explores various aspects of the trance, featuring music by John Adams, Giacinto Scelsi, and Morton Feldman. Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven will be performing this music live with Jean on October 18th at the University of Montreal. More information on this upcoming performance is available here.

Portrait Virus 2010

2010-07-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Michael Wright is presenting his Portrait Virus Project in the Studio of the SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference in Los Angeles from July 25th through July 29th. Wright will use Studio Artist to create portraits of attendees to form a gallery of images printed, projected, blogged at portraitvirussiggraph2010.blogspot.com and placed in his Castle Gallery in Second Life.

Michael also has an ongoing daily self portrait virus project going at mrwstudios.blogspot.com. Michael will be speaking about this project at the Digital Artistry Workshops at Siggraph, held in the Siggraph Studio, room 151, Tuesday July 27th from 2 - 3:30 PM.

If you're at Siggraph in LA this month make sure to stop by the Studio and say hello to Michael.

We've mentioned some other daily art post projects from Studio Artist users here before. I think these kinds of daily art posting projects can be a great source of inspiration and artistic growth for anyone who undertakes them.

Studio Artist Imagery in Wired UK

2010-07-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

The July Issue of Wired UK magazine featured a photo mosaic image generated by Studio Artist user Charis Tsevis. Charis was also featured in an article in the Guardian UK that discusses some of his other high profile Studio Artist generated photo mosaic images.

Charis Tsevis's PhotoStream

2010-04-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

There's a large collection of amazing artwork created by Studio Artist user Charis Tsevis available for your viewing pleasure on Flickr. Charis is a master of using movie brushes to create photo mosaic effects in Studio Artist. His new experiments using Studio Artist to create NeoCubism effects are also pretty cool.

Charis's artwork is widely used in advertising and commercial illustration. Charis also teaches at the AKTO College of Art and Design in Athens Greece. You can check out Charis's artwork via this link.

Paint Regionization Fill Strategies

2010-04-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

This tutorial continues our recent series delving into the secrets of fine tuning auto-regionizing paint effects using the Studio Artist 4 paint synthesizer. In this post we'll be examining different fill strategies for auto-painting in individual regions. The example above was created by using 3 different auto-regionization action steps incorporated into a paint action sequence to build up the final paint styling.

The automatic regionization effects discussed in this tutorial are all created using the path start regionize generator options available in the Path Start control panel of the paint synthesizer. The path start control panel specifies how individual paint strokes are initially positioned in the canvas.

The path start regionize generator options are unique, in that they first intelligently analysis the current source image, breaking it up into a series of individual regions for painting. So in addition to generating a series of start points they also generate a series of region outlines that can then be filled in using the controls in the Path Shape control panel.

For the examples below we'll be using an Adaptive Block Regionize DM path start generator. This particular regionize generator produces a series of rectangular regions that are adaptively positioned and sized to represent the source image. We're using the DM option to then additionally split the blocks to better reproduce the source image details.

As discussed in the previous tutorial post, there are 2 Path Type parameter options in the Path Shape control panel that are specifically designed to be used with path start regionization effects. These are the Path Start Regionize and Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Mode path type options.

Path Start Regionize Shape Types

We'll start by examining the different options available using the Path Start Regionize path type. This path type is specifically designed to be used with path start regionize generators, and will not do anything useful when used with other path start generators that don't perform adaptive regionization. When you select this particular path type you are presented with some additional editing controls that allow you to determine different fill patterns for painting in each generated region.

The simplest region pattern type is outline, which just generates a path for the region outline with no internal fill patterning. As seen in the example below, using this option generates a preset that only paints in the outlines of the individual path start regions.

This example is useful to get a sense of how the adaptive block regionize path start generator is breaking apart the source image of a face into different individual regions. Because we used the DM option we can also see how the individual rectangular blocks were additionally split to better reproduce the original facial features in the source image we are using for these examples. By working with the Max Stroke count and the Block Option controls in the path start control panel we could adjust the number of generated regions and how they are adaptively positioned.

Most of the Region Pattern Type options specify some kind of internal fill pattern for painting in the individual regions. The Hatch1 option shown in the example below fills in the regions with a one-dimensional hatching pattern.

The spacing between hatch lines is determined by the Region Pattern Spacing control. Depending on the size of the source brush you are painting with you can adjust this parameter accordingly. For this example we left some blank space between hatch lines, but by using a larger brush size or a smaller region pattern spacing we could introduce overlap between the individual painted hatch lines.

The Path Angle control panel settings also influence the appearance of the generated fill patterning. In this particular example above the orientation of each regions hatch patterning is determined by the Path Angle option, which is set to Orient. This setting means that the angular orientation of each hatching pattern is trying to best match the associated local visual orientation of the source image.

Outline Fill is another popular region pattern type, and is shown in the example below. Outline Fill paints in the entire region starting with the outer boundary and then moving inward towards the center with progressively smaller internal boundary circling.

Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Mode Gen Shape Types

The other path type associated with path start regionization is the Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Mode Gen path type. When you select this particular path type, the generated region fill patterning will be based on the current settings of the RegionDraw pen mode controls, which are located in the Pen Mode control panel.

RegionDraw pen mode normally works by having a user interactively draw a local region with the pen, either by extending an ellipse or rectangular shape, or by working with a temporary lasso pen line. After the interactive region is specified, it is then painted in with an algorithmically generating path pattern. The fill pattern is specified by the Region Fill Type and Region Spacing controls in the Pen Mode control panel. These same controls specify the region fill patterning when used with the Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Mode Gen path type.

The example below shows off using the ellipse edge scribble fill option for the region fill type parameter.

Region Draw as Pen Solid Fill

Up until now we have been discussing different strategies for painting in path start regions with paint paths following various fill patterns. However, there's an entirely different approach you can take when generating automatic regionization paint effects where each generated region is filled like it is a single brush nib. So the region can be thought of as a solid area fill, as opposed to a collection of individual fill paths painted in with paint on a brush following the path lines. To do this you want to take advantage of Studio Artist's Region Fill as Brush pen modes.

The Region Fill as Brush and Auto Region Fill as Brush pen modes work very differently than the other Studio Artist pen modes. Most pen modes generate a painting path and then fill it in by painting over the internal generated path with a series of nibs of paint. This emulates a paint brush filled with paint following a painting path over an area to distribute paint onto a canvas.

Region Fill as Brush treats the initially drawn path as the outline of a specified region. The region is then filled with a single brush nib whose shape is the specified region. So when used with path start regionization this pen mode will treat each of the generated regions as a single dynamic brush that is filled based on the settings in the Region Fill as Brush control panel. One example of this kind of path start regionization is shown below.

This example uses the default region fill as brush control panel settings, so each of the generated path start regions is filled with solid color. For this simple example we used the Outline region pattern type option for the path start regionize path type used in the outline painting example above. Because we are using the region fill as brush pen mode, the generated outline path is used to define a solid fill region as opposed to defining a painting path.

By working with the different controls in the region fill as brush control panel, and by selecting different path type options for building the fill paths for each path start region, you can generate a wide range of different paint effects that are very different than the more conventional paint in each region with a fill pattern examples we've shown up until this point.

The example above shows off using the Ragged Feather and Inverse Radial Gradient processing options in the region as brush mode control panel. This example also uses a stylized region generator to distort the initial shapes of the auto-generated regions. The other example below shows off using a Linear Gradient processing option with a rectangle generator.

The first example at the very top of this post used 3 different applications of auto-regionization using the region fill as brush pen mode to build a more sophisticated aesthetic painting style. By working with multiple passes of auto-regionization effects and working with the different regionization approaches discussed in this tutorial you can create an immense range of different potential stylistic effects.

The region fill as brush options detailed above are particularly effective for building watercolor effects. This pen mode also offers dual paint options that allow for an initial solid coloring of a region followed by a second application of conventional paint nibs along the region outline path. So you could fill with solid color and then automatically apply a water wash to the region edges.

For More Information

The first tutorial in this series, which focuses on editing strategies for building paint regionzation effects is available here.

The Paint Synthesizer chapter in the Studio Artist User Guide pdf includes detailed descriptions of all of the various paint synthesizer editing controls discussed above.

Some of the paint action sequence (PASeq) presets used in this tutorial are available for download here.

FineTuning Paint Regionization Effects

2010-04-11T13:20:00.001-07:00

The Studio Artist 4 paint synthesizer is capable of creating an extremely wide range of different paint styles. This post is going to focus on discussing some editing techniques you can use to fine tune the appearance of Path Start Regionization painting effects.

Path Start Regionization is an intelligent process where Studio Artist visually analyzes a source image, breaking it up into a series of individual regions that are then painted in one by one to build a finished painting. This is in contrast to the more normal paint synthesizer path generation techniques that focus on selectively adding individual paint strokes one by one across the entire image to build a painting over time.

The Studio Artist paint synthesizer intelligently chooses starting points for paint strokes, builds a drawing path for the stroke, then paints in the generated path by applying nibs of paint on a virtual brush to the canvas while following the path. We'll follow this series of conceptual steps that are happening internally in the paint synthesizer to generate a painting below, detailing some editing options you can work with to fine tune the visual appearance of regionization painting effects.

Breaking the Image into Regions

There are a number of different Path Start Generators that can be used to build regionization effects. They include the Watershed, Adaptive Block, Color Simplify, Cellular, Cell Partition, and HV Partition Regionize generator options in the Path Start control panel.

Each of these regionize path start options first intelligently analyze the source image, and then split it into a series of individual regions. Each approach generates a different characteristic visual look associated with how the individual regions are laid out to partition the image. The best way to get a feel for what they do is to try them out on a source image and see how they break it apart. You can work with the Max Stroke setting to vary the number of generated regions.

Most of these generator options are available with a normal and DM variation. The DM variations provide a tighter rendition of the source image, and work by breaking each initially generated region into 2 pieces. The region splitting is an additional intelligent process that tries to split each region in a way that best reproduces additional detail in the source image. Using the DM regionize generator options is a way to generate a tighter rendition of the original source image in the final painting.

Generating Paths to Fill the Regions

Each generated region can be painted in with a variety of different region fill patterns. How the region is filled in when painting is a function of the Path Shape control panel settings.

For path start regionization painting effects you will want to use a Path Type set to either the Path Start Regionize or Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Gen options. These are special path shape generators that are especially designed to fill the generated path start regions. Each one has a number of additional editing options associated with it that determine the visual appearance and style of the resulting paint path region fill pattern.

The Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Gen option uses the RegionDraw pen mode Region Fill Type patterning to fill the generated region. For all of the examples in this tutorial we're using the Outline Fill pattern type for the Path Start Regionize path type. This fill pattern draws a series of concentric outline paths that move from the region boundary inward to fill in the complete region with paint.

Depending of the brush size you are working with, you will probably want to adjust the Region Pattern Spacing accordingly. This option set the spacing between adjacent region fill paths. Adjusting this parameter lets you set the amount of paint overlap or the gap in paint associated with the region pattern fill. If you are working with multipen mode then the spread of the multipen virtual brush is another factor to take into account, since a multipen is composed of N individual source brush nibs virtually spaced to simulate a wider brush with individual bristles.

Painting the Region Paths

You can turn any paint preset into a paint regionization effect by using the Path Start and Path Shape options described above. However, there are additional editing techniques you can use to fine tune the visual appearance of the resulting painting. Depending on your aesthetic goals you may want to build additional detail in your painting, or perhaps go the other direction and go for a more blocky abstract look. You also have a wide range of different coloring options that can be used to emulate different impressionist coloring styles, map a painting to a particular aesthetic color palette, accurately reproduce your original source colorings, or to go boldly where no one has gone before.

The paint synthesizer automatically sets the current region selection to temporarily match each of the individual regions it is painting. This means that you can take advantage of any paint synthesizer modulation settings that work off of the current region selection to mask or otherwise influence the appearance of each individual region as it's painted in a variety of different ways.

We'll work through a series of examples below using the same source image and adaptiveBlock regionization generator. The adaptiveBlock generator breaks the source image up into a series of adaptively positioned rectangular blocks. The regular nature of this region generation process will be useful as an aid to see how the various masking options we will be discussing below affect the appearance of the finial paintings. Other generator options like the watershed regionize can break the image into regions that more closely map the source image contour areas of local color and shape. We'll be using the DM variation of this generator for most of the examples, which as previously explained breaks each rectangular region into 2 pieces to better reproduce source image detail.

If you want a really tight rendition, you can mask each of the individual paint nibs to the current path start region. You can do this by using the if Region option for the Nib Masking parameter in the Paint Fill Apply control panel.

As seen in the example below, this leads to a very hard masking effect, since each individual paint nib is hard masked when it's at the edge of the current path start region being painted in.

Sometimes this may be just what you are looking for, but there are other approaches to region masking that can lead to a smoother and more natural painted appearance. Path masking (as opposed to nib masking) leads to a more natural appearance for a painting because the drawing path will matchup to the region boundaries but the entire brush nib will paint at the border of the region.

Using the Path End controls is one approach to masking a paint path, but those controls stop the path generation process. What we want is to mask a paint path when it's outside of a region boundary but to not end painting the path if a boundary is crossed (since the path may come back into the region again if it has a complex shape).

So what we're looking for is a Path Application control panel modulator. Fortunately there is one. The Probability option in the Path Application control panel has a Current Selection option. Using this will mask each generated region path so that in any places where it moves outside of the region boundary, painting will be auto-masked.

Again, we're masking the entire application of the paint nib along the path with the controls in this panel, so the entire paint nib will draw at the region boundary. As you can see in the example below, the appearance of the finished painting is more natural than the previous example that uses hard nib masking.

If we turn off the current selection probability masking and the nib masking and let the full regions draw, we get the following looser painted appearance below. Again, we're still using the adaptiveBlock DM path start generator and an outline fill path shape patterning.

To make the paintings appearance even more abstract, we can switch from the adaptiveBlock DM path start generator to the adaptiveBlock generator. Remember that the DM option means that the original region is split into 2 pieces that try to accurately reproduce the source image features. Removing the DM option for this adaptiveBlock regionize generator means that we get rectangular blocks with no additional splitting as shown below. Note how this final image has a very abstract appearance, and has lost a lot of the source image detail seen in the previous examples.

In the proceeding section we moved from an initial very tight representation of the source image through a series of looser more natural paintings to a final very blocky and abstract painted appearance. So it should be obvious that by working with the paint synthesizer editing controls discussed above you have an extremely wide range of personal control over the appearance of regionization paint styles. There are also many more editing options available to you in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer for customizing the appearance of your digital paintings.

All of the examples above used the same individual oil paint preset, which is just one of the thousands of factory paint presets available to you in Studio Artist 4. By working with different kinds of paint presets you could radically change the visual appearance of the path start regionize painting process.

We also used a Max Saturation Color Mode option in the Paint Color Source control panel to give a more impressionistic look to the simulated oil paintings. By adjusting the individual controls in the Paint Color Source and Paint Color Modulation control panels you could radically change the coloring appearance of your oil painting. Or by choosing different factory paint preset or designing your own you could emulate an infinite number of different artistic media styles and resulting visual aesthetics.

For More Information

Here's a Studio Artist 4 tip that discusses Paint regionization.

Here's a link to some downloadable Studio Artist 4 paint presets that emulate some of the paint regionization styles discussed above.

The Paint Synthesizer chapter in the Studio Artist User Guide pdf includes detailed descriptions of all of the various paint synthesizer editing controls discussed above.

Studio Artist 4.02 Update Available

2010-03-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

The latest Studio Artist 4.02 update is now available as a free update for all registered Studio Artist 4 customers. Studio Artist 4.02 contains a number of new features, as well as bug fixes and enhancements.

Gallery Show is a cool new feature in version 4 that allows you to build custom free running art shows or automatically generate an infinite range of new presets and/or art images. Gallery Show has been significantly enhanced in version 4.02, including the new Current Factory and Mutate Current Factory techniques, some additional paint draw options, and the new auto mask options. Two different folders of presets can now be used simultaneously to build customized gallery shows.

Paint Action Sequences can also now be mutated during gallery show runs or via new evolution command links in the integrated help browser. The image at the top of this post was created during an automatic gallery show run based on mutating factory presets. The range of different potential artistic effects that can be created by customized or factory mutated gallery show runs is simply amazing.

The Vectorizer includes a number of new features for the image, shape, and outline techniques as well as some new coloring options. Some additional speed enhancements were also added to the shape technique in addition to a wider range of potential visual effects.

There are new Watershed Sketch and Mass Abstractor image operation effects. The Smart Contrast image operation now supports vector output. There's also some new MSG processors for building modular image processing effects, including live slit scan processing.

The paint synthesizer has some new compositing options to better support adding paper and canvas texture simulations to arbitrary paint presets. The paint synthesizer evolution help page in the integrated help browser has a number of new expanded command options. The paint synthesizer macro edit help page also has a number of new expanded command options. These feature enhancements make it even easier to generate new paint presets or edit existing ones using high level editing commands.

Studio Artist 4 is the next generation of Studio Artist digital art, image and video processing software. With version 4 we’ve now opened up the Studio Artist experience to Windows as well as Mac users. Mac users will be pleased that version 4 is a universal binary application with faster native processing speed on both Intel and PPC Macs. Windows users will be pleased that they can now run Studio Artist on their Windows computers. Studio Artist 4 is compatible with Apple computers running OSX 10.4 through the latest OSX 10.6, and with Windows computers running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Studio Artist 4 still provides the same graphics synthesizer editing metaphors, intelligent visual processing and smart automatic drawing capabilities developed in previous versions of Studio Artist. But the underlying code base was extensively rewritten in version 4 to allow for support of existing features while also providing a solid platform for future development. We also added a ton of new features, enhancements, workflow and speed optimizations.

Studio Artist 4.02 is available today. For more information email techsupport AT synthetik DOT com.

Les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois

2010-02-25T13:59:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux is presenting his Studio Artist animated film "La Folia" at the RVCQ fesitval in Montréal this month. "La Folia" was selected in the "Art et Expérimentation - Corps et Danse" programme ("Art and Experimentation - Body and Dance" program).

For its 27th year in existence, the RVCQ festival, a celebration of Québec Cinema, runs for 10 days (Feb, 17 - 27 2010). Presenting films, workshops, master-classes, panel discussions, exhibitions and parties, it is a major festival where film professionals and their public can meet. You can learn more about the festival and Jean's animated film "La Folia" here.

A web version of the film is also available for viewing here.

A Study in Creative Exploration

2010-02-20T06:55:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist is an incredibly rich sand box for artistic creative exploration and discover. Creativity is an active process of discovery of new ideas. Typically by generating many trial ideas, and then discarding useless or unproductive ones.

I thought it might be illuminating to break down a particular instance of some personal creative exploration that happened while working with Studio Artist. Both to show off some Studio Artist features you may be unaware of, and also to touch on the whole process of creative flow and being willing or flexible enough to go where it takes you.

I'm going to focus on the creative process i went through to generate the image above. Getting to this final image involved following a creative journey. I started by taking my initial thoughts on what might be a fun project and then modified them several times as the work progressed. I ended up with a final artistic approach that was somewhat different than my beginning conceptions, expanding on my initial ideas in some new and interesting ways.

My initial thoughts on this particular creative session involved working with the Dual Mode Paint operation mode to create a paint animation. Dual Mode Paint is a hybrid painting operation that combines a paint synthesizer painting preset along with a dynamic image processing effect.

The particular dual mode paint preset i put together involved a combination of a paint synthesizer preset that generates painted symmetry effects in combination with the Fracture Displacement image operation.

The image below is an example generated using my custom dual mode paint preset. I thought it was generating some interesting abstract painted imagery, but i wasn't really happy with the animation output when i generated a short test movie using the Studio Artist movie stream auto-write features.

So i thought it might be fun to take my paint animation movie and load it as a source movie so that i could further process it, to perhaps generate a more interesting paint animation. I put together a paint action sequence (PASeq) that composited together a warped version of each source frame with the original painted frame along with some cleanup image processing effects to sharpen and boost the contrast of the painted movie frames. I then processed my initial paint animation source movie using my custom PASeq to generate a second paint animation movie file.

The image above is an example of one frame from this second modified paint animation movie. I liked the individual painted frame imagery in this second movie better than my first pass at a paint animation, but i still didn't really like the animation itself as much as the individual frame images. So i decided to try a slightly different approach. Since i liked the frame imagery as a collection of still images, i thought it would be fun to try using my second paint animation movie as a movie brush in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer. That way i could build a larger canvas out of the individual movie frames and their interesting painted textural qualities.

Rather than starting from scratch, i decided to start by taking an existing movie brush preset and modifying it to use my second paint animation movie as the movie brush. I picked the 4.0 Collection B : RegionFillBrushMovieTest : moveTest4 paint preset. It references one of the example movie brushes in the Brush folder provided with the factory paint presets. The image above is an example of the kind of effect generated by the original movie brush paint preset. The image below shows some output from my modified paint preset that used my second paint animation movie as a custom movie source brush.

At this point i liked the textures being generated by the movie brush, but i wanted to try a different arrangement for the blocks of texture being applied to the canvas. I decided i wanted something more ordered rather than just random placement, so i edited the paint preset to use the Adaptive Block Regionize path start generator and the Path Start Regionize path type. I set the max stroke option in the path start control panel to 100 so that i would get a fairly coarse layout of large blocks in my photo mosaic image. The image below shows an example of the kind of output i was able to generate after making these editing changes in the paint synthesizer.

At this point i was liking the layout and quality of the textured blocks. But i wanted to introduce a little more of the original source image edge detail into the mosaic canvas. So i switched the path start generator to the Adaptive Block Regionize DM option. The DM options for all of the path start regionize generators break up the individual generated paint regions into dual regions that split along edge features in the original source image. I also turned on the Local Region nib masking in the paint fill apply control panel so that each paint region was auto-masked rather than drawn as blocks.

I also set the selection to the source image, and applied a slight interactive warp to the mosaic canvas using the Selection Modulate Translate interactive warp option. This helped break up the regularity of the textured mosaic blocks a little, leading to the more organic final output image shown below.

You can use the Canvas : Selection : Set to menu commands to set the selection buffer to a number of different images. In this particular example we're using the selection buffer as a modulation source for an interactive warp. Modulating a warp based on the source or canvas image is a useful trick to add some organic complexity to a canvas, or to simulate image through glass effects with more extreme warps.

So, the final image i generated in my creative journey was very different than my initial impressions of what i was setting out to accomplish when i first sat down to create a paint animation.

The process of creative expression is really a journey of discovery. In this particular example i was willing to 'go with the flow' and ended up at a very different place than my original intentions. But even if i had persisted with my original goal of generating a great paint animation, i would have tried out and discarded a series of artistic ideas and potential techniques to arrive at my final result. That process could be as simple as trying different paint presets or paint synthesizer editing decisions to perfect a particular paint aesthetic. Or in this particular example, re-conceptualizing my initial goal of creating a paint animation to utilizing the results of a paint animation as a movie brush to build a mosaic painting from the individual textured frame images in the paint animation movie file.

For Further Study

This tutorial touched on a number of different Studio Artist features. The Studio Artist Tips site provides a weath of information on different Studio Artist features. Some specific tips related to the discussion in this tutorial are detailed below.

This tip discusses how to work with movie streams to generate movie output as you live paint in Studio Artist.

This tip discusses how to make a movie brush to build a photo mosaic paint preset.

This tip provides some more informariton on working with paint regionization in the paint synthesizer. This tip provides some example brick wall mosaic paint presets you can modify to use your own custom movie brushes with.

This tip provides an introduction to DualMode Paint.

Craig Deeley's Natural Media Presets

2010-02-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Craig Deeley has put together a really wonderful collection of natural media paint presets. These presets are primarily designed for manual hand painting, and emulate different natural media types. The different art media tools provided include things like watercolor, ink, charcoal, pencil, oil paint, pastels, and crayons as well as more exotic tools like his awesome sumi brushes and wet smear presets.

Some of Craig's natural media presets are included as the CD_Hand_Drawn_Media collection in the Studio Artist 4 factory paint synthesizer presets. Craig recently posted some additional natural media presets that expand on the range of effects available in the factory collection you can download here. These are all Studio Artist 4 paint presets, they won't work properly in previous versions of Studio Artist.

The great thing about Studio Artist's paint synthesizer is the extreme flexibility it provides for building custom painting effects. So you can emulate traditional painting tools if you wish. Or you can go boldly into the digital future where no one has gone before, and create your own signature artistic look by editing custom preset tools that reflect your unique artistic style and vision.

You can check out more of Craig's artwork at his web site i-toons.com. Craig has also posted some examples of his work that showcase his natural media preset collection in the Studio Artist User Forum photo section.

Gallery Show 'Surprise Me'

2010-02-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Gallery Show is a new automated presentation feature in Studio Artist 4. Gallery Show allows you to construct custom art shows that could be displayed in a gallery or used in a live performance. Gallery Show is also a great tool for automatically generating collections of art images and the presets that built them. You can set up a gallery show run, then come back several hours later and cull through the results, looking for keeper images and keeper preset processing effects.

Gallery Shows are based on a set of Gallery preferences that can be edited to customize a gallery show presentation. There are a number of different techniques that can be selected to build a gallery show. Some techniques are based on working with factory presets or sets of custom presets you build and store in a favorites folder. Other techniques are based on mutating and evolving sets of presets or operation mode settings.

One fun technique is called Surprise Me. This technique does exactly what you might expect, something different every time it runs. It culls through all of the different technique options, randomly choosing a new one for each gallery show cycle. Many of the individual techniques have additional options, so the range of potential effects that can be created with a surprise me gallery show technique is indeed quite surprising.

Everyone at Synthetik Software is very familiar with Studio Artist and all of the different things it can do. But we're still constantly amazed at the new effects we discover when we run gallery show.

Individuals often tend to gravitate towards certain favorite presets or processing techniques when working with software. Working with gallery show can help to break you out of repetitive work patterns you've grown accustomed to using, and in doing so can lead you to new types of artistic effects and educate you about the incredible range of potential visual effects Studio Artist is capable of achieving.

Like any artistic process, there will be keepers and junk. So if a particular gallery show cycle generates something not too interesting, just ignore it and wait to see what happens next. You could run a Surprise Me gallery show all week and it will still be generating new and interesting images the whole time.

You can stream your gallery show art out to a folder of images by using an image stream. And you can record the mutated presets generated during the gallery show run by turning on history recording. These Studio Artist features give you the ability to record what a gallery show run is generating and then cull through the results at a later time. Like any generative artistic process, you evaluate the results, keep the interesting images and effect presets, and throw away the rest.

You can also take the results of a gallery show run and turn it into a unique custom movie brush to build photo mosaic effects. Moving the initial gallery show generative art process to a whole new level.

If you desire more control in putting together a custom gallery show than just the element of surprise and extreme variation you get using the surprise me technique, then you can work with custom preset folders. There's an endless range of ever evolving visual effects and aesthetic looks you can achieve by carefully designing sets of presets that work together to build your desired gallery show aesthetic. Custom Favorites preset folders allow you to mix and match different preset types together to build you custom visual performance.

Gallery shows can be constructed to work with random source images from an image collection of your choosing, from a single static image, or from live video captures taken at the beginning of each gallery show cycle. Additional processing presets can also be incorporated at the start of the gallery show cycle to modify the last gallery show display image before the new processing effect in the current cycle is run.

All of the images in this post were generated during a single gallery show surprise me run. They are just a few of the unque art images and processing effects generated during this single gallery show run.

Gallery show is an amazing new feature in Studio Artist 4. Probably the most amazing thing about it is all the cool effects we don't even know about waiting to be discovered from working with gallery show.

There's a tutorial tip on the Studio Artist Tips blog you can read that presents more information on how to build a custom gallery show. For more information on working with gallery show check out the tip.

H.J. Kropp's Visual sketchBLOG

2010-02-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled upon Studio Artist user H.J. Kropp's visual sketchbook blog, and it's truly awe inspiring. Lot's of great Studio Artist generated art there. There's also some cool examples of his Studio Artist 'One Minute Paintings' which is a really interesting way to approach creating art that is fun, fast, and highly successful. You should definetly check it out at www.blog.artfusion.de/ .

The Making of Year of the Fish

2010-02-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

On the anniversary of it's initial Sundance Film Festival premiere, I thought it was time to take another look at the making of the Studio Artist animated film Year of the Fish. What I love about Year of the Fish is that it's a beautiful example of what a single individual can achieve working with Studio Artist and it's automatic rotoscoping and paint animation capabilities. What Studio Artist is really all about is empowering individuals to create their own artistic styles and visual effects. Year of the Fish is really a stunning example of what an individual with some creative vision working with Studio Artist is able to artistically achieve.

I recently spoke with director and Studio Artist user David Kaplan about the making of his feature length Studio Artist animated film Year of the Fish. David provided some interesting technical details on the making of the film. He's also very excited about the upcoming Year of the Fish DVD release happening later this year.

What was your inspiration for doing the film?

Year of the Fish is a loose adaptation of an old Chinese fairy tale from the Tang Dynasty. Because I knew we wouldn’t have a lot of funding I wanted to do a very low budget film based in New York City where I live. So I decided to set the film in modern day NYC Chinatown. The initial script was developed at the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters labs.

Because of our budget constraints we needed to shoot in standard-def video. But I wanted to turn that initial harsh hyper-realistic footage into something more lush and lyrical that would be presented in high definition HD resolution. I wanted to situate the film in a place somewhere between dream and reality. Instead of going for more and more detail with a photo-realistic look, I wanted to strip detail away to create a more impressionist feel. Studio Artist's auto-rotoscoping paint animation features enabled me to take our initial standard-def video footage and reinterpret it as stylized impressionistic paint animation with high definition film resolution.

Were you inspired by other rotoscoped films like the ones created by Richard Linklater?

You mean Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly? Yes, Richard's films were an inspiration. They are presented in more of a graphic novel style with very clean sharp edges and flat color. We certainly could have used Studio Artist to create a visual look like that. But I wanted to develop a much looser more impressionistic visual look for our film. One where colors spill across boundaries and melt into each other. A more painterly approach to rendering the animated film.

Richard's films were also created by a very large team of individual animators who animated manually by hand over a long period of time to build up all of the rotoscope animation effects. It requires a huge budget to make a film like that, something that would have been totally impossible for us to put together. Studio Artist was really a revelation for me because I was able to create a complete feature length animated film working at my kitchen table in my apartment in NYC in a few months. I didn't need a large team of animators to achieve the animation effects I wanted to create, I didn't need to come up with the money to pay them, and I was able to work much faster than would have been the case if each individual frame in our feature length film was completely hand painted.

In hindsight I wish we had taken things further, made the final film even more impressionist and painterly. At the time I was a bit timid because I didn't want the effects to get in the way of the story. Maintaining very distinct and coherent facial detail was a big concern as we developed the paint action sequence presets we used to render the film. And that's something we were able to achieve when working with Studio Artist.

I certainly think you achieved your initial design goals in the final film. The paint animation looks stunning when seen on a large theatre screen. And as I watched the film I was continuously struck with how you utilized Studio Artist's paint animation effects to help tell the story and set the mood of the film. I never felt like the animation was gratuitous or out of place, which is not something I can say about some other rotoscoped films I've seen.

Can you talk a little about the equipment setup you used to make the film?

The live action segments of the movie were filmed using a Sony DSR-PD170 standard definition camera. All of the film editing was done on a mac using Final Cut Pro Studio. Because the film is feature length and we needed to auto-rotoscope a lot of footage we put together a setup with 4 G5 Power Macs running Studio Artist for rendering the paint animation. We also used Wacom tablets for some additional hand touch up work using Studio Artist's canvas movie feature where you can load a movie file into the canvas and then paint on individual frames.

How long did it take to render out the film? I seem to remember you did the initial work, and then after the film was accepted into Sundance you did a final pass at a higher resolution.

The rotoscoping process took approximately 6-8 months using 4 G5 Macs. I did a standard definition version first as a test run sketch and then redid all the shots in uncompressed HD 720 for our digital master, which we then up-converted to HD 1080 for festival screenings and eventual 35mm transfer for our theatrical release. There was a lot of experimentation at every stage and most shots were rendered several times over until a satisfying look was achieved. There was a lot of learning on the job so I think if I did it again, the process would take half the time.

New Studio Artist 4 runs much faster than 3.5, especially on more modern Intel macs. So if version 4 had been available when you worked on the film I think that would have sped things up quite a bit as well.

One thing i thought was very interesting was your use of custom color palettes to help set the mood for different scenes. Can you talk a little about how you worked with Studio Artist to achieve your custom colorization effects.

What I did was to find images online that had a certain color "feel" to them - say Van Gogh's "Starry Night," or Bruegel's various winter or harvest scenes, or any work by Cezanne - load these into Studio Artist as a source image and create a color palette using "Generate Source Color Palette from Source Image." Once this palette is created I could save it (Source Color Palette Export) and apply it to a new source image or video clip as part of my rotoscoping steps using Image Operations > Color Palette Map. This was particularly helpful when doing day for night scenes (all these scenes were created using the same color palette) or scenes that were shot in bright colorful summertime but were supposed to look gray and wintery; moreover, it gave a certain subtle aesthetic elegance to the overall color scheme of the movie.

I remember you also used Studio Artist to adjust the aspect ratio of your footage to match what you needed for the final film projection. Can you discuss some details about what you did to do that?

We were going from source video that was standard-def in 4:3 aspect ratio to HD in 16:9 aspect ratio, so I would use a canvas size of 1280 x 720 (16:9) and at some point in the PASeq I would do an interactive warp step to adjust/stretch the image accordingly in the canvas. Basically, we'd lose a little bit of the top or bottom of the frame - or both - but with the warp step in SA you can adjust each shot individually.

Did you do all the Studio Artist work yourself?

Mostly, yes - though I had a couple people help for a week here and there. Unfortunately, the film's budget was too low to hire a team of people.

What percentage of the auto-rotoscoped footage was touched up via hand painting using the Studio Artist canvas movie features?

I'd say around 30%. We were able to achieve some wonderful and interesting effects via the auto-rotoscoping. I would have liked to have done more hand/detail work but we simply ran out of time.

Any words of advice for someone looking to put together a rotoscoped animated film project? Any technical issues to be aware of?

It's very important to shoot progressive live-action footage. I did not, and the subsequent de-interlacing took a lot of time and effort.

Also, if you plan to work with uncompressed HD footage, as we did, you'll need a RAID array to handle the data transfer for playback; firewire won't cut it.

Further, if it's a high-def project, I would highly recommend working in HD 720 (1280 x 720) rather than HD 1080 (1920 x 1080) for any rotoscoping work - a 1080 frame size is simply too unwieldy to manage. Render times go way up and there isn't the ability to play around and experiment the same way.

It would be interesting to see if you felt the same way about working directly at 1080 when working with Studio Artist 4 on modern intel machines. I find myself gravitating towards larger frame sizes these days when designing paint action sequences for effects due to the increased processing speed of Studio Artist 4 running on todays macs. Even Studio Artist 3.5 runs faster in emulation mode on a modern intel mac than it does on an older PPC machine.

What in particular did you like about working with Studio Artist?

The range of possible visual styles you can create with Studio Artist is basically infinite. One can go very organic and flowing with the look. And there's room for an incredible amount of experimentation. With Year Of The Fish, I was a bit timid with the look. On the next film I do with Studio Artist, I would go even more dreamy and painterly - I'd take it really far out there.

What are you working on now?

I've just finished a science-fiction short film for PBS called "PLAY." It's about video games in the future. Now I'm writing what I hope will be my next feature film. My website www.kaplanworks.com has information about my various projects.

We'll keep you informed on the upcoming DVD release for Year of the Fish.

You can check out a larger Quicktime version of the Year of the Fish trailer video here.

Here's a set of technical specs for all of the equipment David used when working on Year of the Fish.

Tech specs for YEAR OF THE FISH.

workflow:

- shot on miniDV DVCAM (Sony PD-170)
- edited standard-def on Final Cut Pro
- picture locked
- rotoscoped at 720p24 HD resolution via Studio Artist to create HD digital master
- sound mix, titles, and final color tweaking
- transfered to HD tape and 35mm film for projection

software:

- Final Cut Pro Studio (v. 5.1)
- Synthetik Studio Artist (v. 3.5)

equipment:

- Sony PD-170 video camcorder

- Sony DSR-11 DVCAM deck

- Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5 GHz (4 GB RAM) (for standard definition editing)

- 4 other Macs (for HD rotoscoping/rendering):
- Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7 GHz (4 GB RAM)
- 2 Power Mac G5 Quads 2.5 GHz
- Mac Pro Intuos Quad

- (all the macs had about 4 GB RAM and good graphics cards like the ATI radeon x850 XT 256MB)

- Xserve RAID (14x400GB) (for HD editing and storage)

- Fibre Channel PCI-X card (to connect to RAID array for fast HD data transfer)

- Blackmagic HD Pro 4:4:4 Card PCI-X

- Blackmagic HDLink (for HD monitoring)

- Apple 23" Cinema Displays (for each station)

- Sony PVM-14L5 Analog Studio Monitor (for color correction)

- 2 Wacom Intuos 3 9x12 tablets (for rotoscoping)

Generating Adaptive Photo Mosaic Effects

2010-02-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist provides a large number of different tools you can use to build a wide variety of different photo mosaic or photo montage effects. The example above shows an adaptive photo mosaic effect, rendering one large image using a collection of different sized smaller sub images.

This tutorial will discuss some approaches you can use when working with Studio Artist to build photo mosaic images where the sub images are adaptively sized. Working with adaptive sizing is visually interesting, and can also lead to more representational photo mosaic effects where the placement of smaller sub images is used to better represent edge structure in the large mosaic image.

All of the examples we'll be discussing in this tutorial were generated using the Studio Artist 4 paint synthesizer. The paint synthesizer is an extremely flexible environment for creating an endless variety of different paint effects and associated artistic styles. Building photo mosaic imagery is just a small part of the wide range of artistic effects the Studio Artist paint synthesizer is capable of creating.

You can create photo mosaic style imagery in Studio Artist's paint synthesizer by working with movie brushes. A movie brush is a paint preset that incorporates a Quicktime movie file into the paint brush. When used to construct photo mosaic imagery you can think of the movie brush as being a container for a collection of images. Each frame in the movie brush is a single image in the image collection.

There are many different approaches you can take to putting together an image collection for use in building photo mosaic imagery. The images could be organized to present some kind of visual theme. The theme could be based on the representational content in the images, the textural or color qualities of the imagery, or the images could be totally random. It all depends on what artistic effect you are trying to achieve in your final output. And how you are going to possibly process the images internally in your paint synthesizer movie brush preset.

Traditional photo mosaic effects use the coloring of the individual collection images to reproduce color for local areas of the large output image. But Studio Artist does not restrict you to working this way. You can use the original coloring of the images in your movie brush to build your final output image. But you can also use the power of the paint synthesizer to appropriately colorize the component images of your movie brush as they are being positioned in the final output mosaic image.

One approach to colorizing your movie brush images on the fly as they are painted is to use the paint synthesizer's Brush Load control panel. There are a large number of different image brush load colorization algorithms available to choose from. The screen snap below shows the use of the Paint Color Mean Shift algorithm.

The extreme colorization example below shows a photo mosaic built from one self similar image that is recolorized as it's positioned throughout the mosaic. It was generated using the paint synthesizer's Paint Brush Load control panel settings shown above.

If you want to not colorize your image collection then you should choose the overall set of component images so that they appropriately reproduce the coloring of the larger image you want to represent in the photo mosaic. If you are recolorizing your movie brush images, then you can potentially ignore your individual component image coloring when putting together your image collection. Recolorizing is a powerful Studio Artist feature that gives you much more flexibility in putting together thematic collections of images since you can just focus on the content and not have to worry about also generating the appropriate color distribution in the image collection to accurately reproduce your output image.

The simplest approach to building a photo mosaic image is to build a regular rectangular grid of smaller images that are positioned to represent the larger image. The example below shows off this particular approach. If you compare it to the adaptive grid photo mosaic image at the top of this tutorial you can see that the adaptive grid approach does a much better job of reproducing the source detail of the larger image we are trying to represent in our photo mosaic.

One of the simplest ways to build an adaptive grid photo mosaic is to work with multiple passes of the same movie brush preset. In each subsequent pass the brush size is reduced. If you want your smaller images to sub tile your larger images then you would want to reduce the size by 50% for each additional reduced size pass.

You have the option of working by painting in your additional reduced brush size passes manually or automatically. If you are working with manual painting, then you can turn on Studio Artist's transparent onion skin display option to bring some of the original source image into the draw canvas as a transparent overlay. The source onion skin can be a useful aid when manually painting in smaller mosaic blocks at reduced sizes to build up edge and feature detail in your adaptive grid photo mosaic.

The paint synthesizer has automatic tiling parameter options you can turn on to insure that your manual painting will match up properly to your original tiling grid. The paint synthesizer screen snap below shows the Path Application control panel option called Mode set to the rectangular tiling option. Turning this option on forces the brush placement to automatically tile as you paint.

Manual painting can give you a lot of control over the final appearance of the adaptive grid photo mosaic. but it can be time consuming. An alternative approach is to use auto-painting for all of the reduced brush size passes. You can edit your movie brush paint preset so that it will focus drawing on source edges automatically, only drawing in those areas and ignoring other parts of the canvas as the reduced brush size auto-drawing takes place.

One approach that can be used to focus painting on the source edge locations in your paint canvas is to turn on the paint synthesizer's path start Texture Range control option. The setting shown above focuses painting on source edge features. By increasing the Texture Min setting you focus painting on stronger images while ignoring weaker edge and flat regions of the source image.

To generate the automatic adaptive grid photo mosaic image shown at the top of this post i used 3 reduced size paint passes with my original grid tiling movie brush preset. For each of these subsequent paint passes i reduced the brush size by 50%. I also turned on the path start Texture Range option shown above, and increased the Texture Min setting for each of the subsequent paint passes. So progressively smaller brush tiles were painted at progressively stronger edge feature locations in the photo mosaic.

The example below shows another adaptive grid photo mosaic image automatically generated using the paint synthesizer movie brush techniques described above.

As mentioned above, the Studio Artist paint synthesizer is extremely flexible and is capable of creating an intense range of different stylistic effects. An alternative approach to building adaptive grid photo mosaics is to use the paint synthesizer's path start regionize features to position variable sized image blocks to build the adaptive photo mosaic. The example below is one example of using the paint synthesizer's adaptive block regionize path start generator to build an adaptive photo mosaic image. Note that using path start regionize generators to build your adaptive grid leads to a different kind of adaptive grid and associated flatter visual look.

For more information on building photo mosaic effects in Studio Artist you can check out this post.

For some example paint presets you can use to build photo mosaic effects check out this post. These examples show off applications of the paint synthesizer's path start regionization features.

Here's another post on photo mosaic art.

Here's a Studio Artist 4 tip on how to build a movie brush from a folder of images.

A paint preset you can use to build the adaptive photo mosaci effect described in the first part of this post can be downloaded here.

Studio Artist 4 Update

2010-01-30T21:19:00.000-08:00

We've been posting information regarding Studio Artist 4 here and on the Studio Artist User Forum for awhile now. So we wanted to present some update information on what's happening with the Studio Artist 4 release.

Quick Overview of Studio Artist 4 Features

Studio Artist 4 is the next generation of Studio Artist digital art, image and video processing software. With version 4 we’ve now opened up the Studio Artist experience to Windows as well as Mac users. Mac users will be pleased that version 4 is a universal binary application with faster native processing speed on both Intel and PPC Macs. Windows users will be pleased that they can now run Studio Artist on their Windows computers. Studio Artist 4 is compatible with Apple computers running OSX 10.4 through the latest OSX 10.6, and with Windows computers running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Studio Artist 4 still provides the same graphics synthesizer editing metaphors, intelligent visual processing and smart automatic drawing capabilities developed in previous versions of Studio Artist. But the underlying code base was extensively rewritten in version 4 to allow for support of existing features while also providing a solid platform for future development. We also added a ton of new features, enhancements, workflow and speed optimizations.

The new Studio Artist 4 workspace is much more modular in nature and can be custom configured depending on your particular workflow. You can dock and reposition your working palettes and toolbars anywhere at the edges of the main workspace. Palettes can be tab nested on top of each other to conserve screen space. Palettes can also be floated outside the main workspace, which is very useful in dual monitor and live performance setups. You can switch on the fly while working between 4 different user configurable workspace memories and a full screen display mode. Multiple levels of undo are also now supported.

Studio Artist 4 provides enhanced functionality and new features while maintaining compatibility with all of your old Studio Artist presets. The factory preset collection has also been significantly expanded, providing thousands of new presets to explore and modify. A new Favorites preset toolbar allows you to custom organize sets of working favorites presets in a space saving moveable toolbar. The new integrated help browser allows you to document, organize, and access presets via custom html help pages.

Studio Artist 4 includes new real time interaction features. Loop Action allows you to switch between different processing presets on the fly while they run in a live processing loop. Effect and paint parameters can also be live adjusted while Studio Artist is auto painting or processing in loop action. Paint Synthesizer Time Particles take on a whole new life with live editing while they are painting. Live video capture can also be incorporated into loop action processing along with live interactive editing for live visual performance or live video synthesis. The new Gallery Show features allow you to build custom free running art shows or automatically generate an infinite range of new presets and/or art images.

The Paint Synthesizer now has over 480 adjustable parameters and is capable of an even wider range of potential styles and effects. Hybrid vector-raster paint effects can now be created, like painting a vector region that then has it's edges melted or smeared with water using a single paint preset. The new Live Extend path shape option allows for wild dynamic paint styles with physics based behavior. Photo mosaic, movie brush, and paint regionization features have been enhanced to expand your creative potential. The new Dual Paint operation mode allows you to combine digital painting and live image processing together to create dynamic organic paint presets as well as amazing interactive visual effects.

The Paint Synthesizer and Vectorizer now provide direct anti-aliased vector drawing and vector output. Vector files can be output to eps, pdf, or svg vector file formats for resolution independent output. Bezier paths can be embedded in a paint preset and then animated over time, creating dynamic animation or cross hatching effects. Bezier path editing for creating morph or warp effects has been streamlined for faster workflow.

The old Layer and Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) timeline functionality have been integrated into a single new PASeq timeline editor. PASeq batch processing features allow for enhanced professional workflow when auto-rotoscoping multiple movie files. The new Movie Layer features allow for Quicktime movie files to be embedded in multiple canvas layers when building animation effects or doing manual touchup to individual movie frames.

The Image Operation effects have been extensively enhanced and expanded. New intelligent Image Operation effects like Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass effects can now directly generate Bezier paths in addition to raster processing effects. The new intelligent path generation features can be combined with the infinite variability of the Paint Synthesizer’s drawing engine to create an endless range of different art styles and processing effects limited only by your imagination.

The new Temporal Image Processing operation mode provides a number of new time based image processing effects. These new temporal effects can be used for video processing. They can also be used to generate static images from video sequences that encapsulate the motion in a video sequence into a single static image. They can also generate a static panorama view based on the video camera’s panning and movement in a scene. Slit scan temporal effects can be used to expand, contract, extract or remove motion from a scene as well as create amazing looking visual effects.

Much of the old MSG Evolver modular image processing editing capabilities are now accessible directly in version 4 via the new MSG Advanced Editor and MSG Evolution palettes. You can use directed evolution to generate an infinite variety of different abstract procedural art images as well as image and video processing effects without delving into the technical aspects of MSG editing. There are now over 500 MSG processors available that can be combined together for constructing custom modular image processing effects. MSG presets can also be used to expand the Paint Synthesizer's capabilities through the use of MSG source brushes, brush load processing, path start, and path shape generators.

More information on Studio Artist 4 can be found at the Studio Artist Tips site at www.synthetik.com/tips/wordpress.

How to Get Studio Artist 4

There have been a lot of requests from existing Studio Artist customers as well as new windows customers about when they can upgrade to Studio Artist version 4. The Studio Artist 4.0 release code is finished at this point in time. We're still working on finishing up new video tutorials and some supplementary documentation for the 'official' version 4 release.

Since we're at the end of the development cycle for version 4, we've decided to allow interested customers the opportunity to upgrade to version 4 early prior to the completion of the video tutorials. We briefly mentioned this on the Studio Artist User Forum but i also wanted to post the information here so that anyone interested in taking advantage of getting an early start working with Studio Artist 4 could do so at this time.

The list price for Studio Artist 4 for new customers is $399. There is special upgrade pricing for existing Studio Artist customers. And there is also special academic pricing available as well. If you are interested in getting started now with Studio Artist 4 now please contact Synthetik Software technical support via email at techsupport AT synthetik Dot com and we'll send you the appropriate information.

Utilizing Video Processing to Build 2D Art Imagery

2010-01-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about Studio Artist is that it bridges the gap between 2D art programs and video processing and animation programs. What i love about this is that it allows for cross pollination between different art forms that would normally not mix.

Sometimes 2D artists wonder why they would need to use animation features. Video artist wonder why they would need advanced 2D paint features. The answer is that you can still be a 2D artist or a video artist and use the expanded functionality available in Studio Artist to explore new artistic ground within the 2D or video artistic domains you are comfortable working in.

One interesting example of this cross pollination i've been exploring recently involves using video processing as a way to build 2D artistic images.

A video sequence provides a sequence of inter-related 2D images that can be combined together in different ways to build 2D artwork. Studio Artist provides a great environment for 2D artists to try out this kind of exploration because of all of the advanced video animation and manipulation features it offers.

Things get even more interesting when you process a video sequence with some kind of Studio Artist effect and then use the effected video sequence as your sequence of source images to build 2D artwork. One simple approach is to work with multiple layers to combine together a series of offset frame images from a processed or paint animated movie file. Different layer compositing and opacity mix settings can be used to build your final 2D image from a collection of time offset sequential processed video frames.

The image at the top of this post is an example of using 3 different video frames grabbed from a paint animated movie sequence as source images for 3 Studio Artist layers. I used Studio Artist's interactive translate warp capabilities to reposition the individual video frames to achieve my final spatial composition. After adjusting the individual layer opacity and compositing settings, the layers were flattened down to one layer and then further processed to achieve the final finished output image.

Studio Artist 4's temporal image operations are also a great tool to use to build static 2D imagery out of video sequences. The center example was created by processing a video sequence with the Studio Artist temporal rank filter.

The example below was generated by processing a paint animation sequence with the Studio Artist temporal motion rank filter. This filter takes multiple video frames and processes them to create a single effected output image. For the example below a motion rank max algorithm was used. What this temporal filter does is examine a group of video frames, compare them to find the fastest movement in any given area of each video frame, and then paint the fastest movement it found in any given spatial location into the processed output image

So don't be afraid to explore new features of Studio Artist you might normally think would not have any relevance to your particular area of artistic expertise. Cross pollination is a great way to expand your creative potential, and to have fun in the process.

What is Studio Artist

2010-01-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

As we begin a new year i thought it might be fun to reflect for a minute on why Studio Artist is such an awesome art program.

So, What is Studio Artist?

Studio Artist transcends a lot of existing graphics software product categories. It's a digital paint program. Its an image processing and photo manipulation program. It's a video processing program. It's a paint animation program. It's a procedural art generation program. You can create 2D imagery, but you can also create time based animation or video processing effects. By straddling existing product boundaries it isn't restricted by the artificial marketing categories that have been created by restricting software products to be just a photo manipulation or digital paint or video processing program. Studio Artist is all of these things and more.

Studio Artist is a Graphics Synthesizer. This means it's a tool for synthesizing artistic visual imagery as well as a tool for building an infinite variety of custom visual effects.

Studio Artist takes working metaphors from music synthesis and applies them to digital painting, photo manipulation, and video processing. Studio Artist also incorporates advanced visual modeling based on human perception of imagery in the brain and applies that visual intelligence to control automatic painting as well as image and video processing effects. Studio Artist provides intelligent assistance that helps you create artistic imagery much faster and with more fun than other programs.

You can do everything in Studio Artist manually by hand if you wish. Or you can select a preset, press a button and let Studio Artist do all the work. You can also work interactively while Studio Artist intelligently works behind the scenes to dynamically assist your manual hand work.

What i love about Studio Artist is that it helps you create artistic imagery. So you can quickly generate an infinite variety of different artistic images or processing effects. You're still in the loop as an artist, making decisions about what you like and don't like. But at the same time you don't have to do all the work. Unless you really want to, and even then intelligent assistance is working behind the scenes to make your work more organic, visually complex and compelling.

When i sit down to use other digital painting or visual effects programs i tend to get frustrated very quickly. I also tend to get very little accomplished, even after putting a lot of work into a project. Because nothing happens in those other programs that isn't directly instigated and driven by the user. So creating a single painting or artistic image or visual effect is a very tedious and time consuming task. One that is limited by the physical motor skills you have available to you. One that is limited by your internal energy and concentration to preserver until the job is finished. What should be a fun and creative process quickly becomes a chore. A marathon of internal energy is required to actually create something.

After using one of these other digital art program, returning to Studio Artist is like a breath of fresh air. I can immediately start generating an infinite variety of different artistic images very quickly.

My work could be derived off of source images, source video, or it could be complete visual abstraction generated from no prior imagery. Work derived from source imagery could be realistic, or very abstracted output that is nothing like a conventional clone effect and has no direct relationship to the content of the original source imagery.

I can try out different pre-built intelligent presets to stimulate my visual creativity. When i find something i like i can then edit it to customize or further enhance the visual effect. When i create something new i like i can then save it as a new custom preset for use at a later date. I can do detailed editing, potentially adjusting hundreds of different parameters that affect the look and feel of a digital paint tool. Or i can press a button and have Studio Artist generate new sets of presets automatically for me to cull through looking for keepers.

I can generate sets of procedural abstractions or modular image processing effects at the click of the mouse, working with directed evolution over time to build amazing artistic imagery i could never have created or even conceived of if i had to manually build them from scratch. At the same time i have the ability to get under the hood and fine tune modular image processing or procedural art effects via detailed editing if i wish to refine or fine tune a particular effect or image. With over 500 modular image processing modules that can be combined together in an unlimited number of different ways i have access to an endless supply of different visual effects.

I can generate free running gallery shows that generate new artwork and visual effects unattended. Gallery show can be used to build dynamic customized art displays, visual performance pieces, or as a way to automatically generate new presets effects or sets of art images that can be culled through later for keepers.

I can work with live visual synthesis in real time. Building recursive visual effects that feed back on themselves. Processing live video captures. Changing between different preset effects on the fly without interrupting my visual performance. Live editing effects and watching them adjust in real time. Streaming my live visual performance out to a video file to capture a visual performance.

Studio Artist is all this and more.

Stay tuned for amazing new Studio Artist developments over the upcoming year.

Adding Representational Detail to an Abstract Image or Animation

2010-01-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

One of the great features of Studio Artist is that it gives you an unlimited number of different techniques you can use to build abstract images or videos. But sometimes you want to create a recognizable abstraction that still maintains features of your source image. Studio Artist also gives you many different tools you can use to take a totally abstract image and make it more representational. So you can take something very abstract and modify it to make it more closely resemble a specific image.

The example at the top of this post showcases what i'm talking about. It's a frame from a paint animation. The paint style is fairly abstract, but the original image content is still recognizable. This can be especially important when dealing with source video facial features in a paint animation.

I started this project by using a single Studio Artist paint synthesizer preset that auto-rotoscopes a video file to produce a very abstract wet paint look. The image below shows off what you get by processing a single video frame with my soft wet look paint preset. Note that the painted image is very soft and abstract. There's not a lot of feature detail in the abstract painting.

There are many different approaches to adding detail in a painting. A more conventional approach would be to continue subsequent paint passes using progressively smaller brush sizes to build detail in the painting. These additional paint passes could also be edited in the paint synthesizer to more closely focus on painting edge detail in the image. Auto masking features could also be turned on that automatically mask paint nibs to prevent edge or feature distortion. All of these different techniques will work to help generate a painting that more closely resembles the original source image it is derived from (like the image below).

But for this particular example i thought it would be fun to not use any of those paint synthesizer techniques and to instead focus on other ways to add source image features back into an already abstract image. Probably the simplest approach is to just mix some of the original source image back into the abstract image. You can easily do this by using the Fixed Image Ip Op at the end of your Paint Action Sequence. The settings below for this image operation show how to generate a 50% mix of the source image with whatever is currently in the canvas.

The nice thing about this approach for source mixing is that you can do this without having to use multiple layers. The image below shows what you get when you use this approach with the abstract painting shown above.

This source mixing approach can sometimes be very effective, it's easy to understand,and is easy to apply to any abstract image. But it does soften the abstract image, and sometimes this might not be desirable. Not to worry, there are other approaches you can use that can add feature detail into an abstract image while still retaining all of the visual characteristics that makes the abstract image interesting.

One alternate i like is to use is a spatially modulated adaptive warp which when properly executed can add back some original source image edge representation. This is easy to do using Studio Artist's interactive warp functionality. You generate an appropriate selection image and then use the Selection Modulate Rotate or Selection Modulate Translate interactive warps to warp the abstract canvas.

Using the source image as the selection is one approach. But for this particular example i wanted something that would only add edge features back into abstract canvas. So i generated a high spatial frequency representation of the source image (shown below) and made that the current selection.

You can use the Equalizer ip op to do this. I set the ip op's composite option to replace region selection. So when the ip op effect is run the result is directly placed in the selection buffer instead of the canvas. I then used the mouse to interactively warp the abstract canvas, using a warp option that modulates the warp based on the current selection image.

The image below shows off the result after using the Selection Modulate Rotate interactive warp. Note how it retains the original characteristics of the abstract paint field while also maintaining the edge feature characteristics of the original source image.

The great thing about Studio Artist is that it provides an extremely flexible and full featured environment to create your own custom digital paint, image or video processing effects. The techniques we showcased here are just a quick glimpse into the vast configurable visual effects toolbox available in Studio Artist.

I added one extra step to the movie processing by adding some of the high spatial frequency image we used as the selection image above into the abstract canvas after the interactive warp step. When generating a paint animation you also always want to try and add some temporal continuity from frame to frame into the overall process. I did this by overpainting on my previous output frame, and insuring that the new paint strokes only partially covered the old painting. Because parts of the old output frame are still exposed in the next frame there's temporal continuity from frame to frame and hence reduced flicker in the resulting animation.

There are many other techniques you could use to build source representation and to reduce flicker in paint animations. The point of this particular tutorial example was to show that there are some fairly simple approaches you can use to take something very abstract and make it more recognizable. In a real project you might want to combine approaches like we describe here along with multiple paint passes or time particles to build your ultimate paint animation effect.

The video example below shows the final effect in a processed movie

paint animation ex5 from john dalton on Vimeo.

January Film Screenings and Workshop

2010-01-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist animator Jean Detheux will be in Toronto at the end of January giving a lecture along with a screening of many of his Studio Artist animated films. This will be followed by a live performance using Studio Artist in conjunction with musicians Lori Freedman and Scott Thomson and a dancer.

The next day he will present an all day workshop on the making of his films that focuses on working with Studio Artist and Final Cut Pro. The screening and workshop events take place at Le Labo in the Toronto Distillery District in conjunction with the Toronto Animated Image Society on January 30 and 31. You can lean more here.

Jean's Studio Artist animated film 'Civil War' is also showing in Los Angles this Thursday January 7th. The showing takes place at the iotaSalon at the UCLA campus's Broad Art Center. You can learn more here.

Some of the music for Civil War was by Dave Nagel, another long time Studio Artist user and the host of the original Studio Artist DMN forum.

Temporal Image Processing

2009-12-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

One of the cool new features in Studio Artist 4 is the Temporal Image Operation processing mode. Temporal Image Operations are designed to work with loaded source video and can be used to create static processed images from video sequences, or to create interesting time based video processing effects.

Each output frame generated by a Temporal Image Operation effect is based on multiple source video frames. A user can adjust the time window (or number of frames) used for temporal processing when editing a custom temporal effect preset. The time window could be just a few frames or it could be the entire video sequence depending on what kind of effect you want to create.

Temporal processing effects can be used to encapsulate video motion occurring over time into a single static image.

Video pans can be turned into single static panorama images. The temporal scan tracker effect panorama example below was generated from a source video sequence taken out of the side window of a fast moving car on Maui.

The panorama image below was generated using a temporal slit scan effect processing a short video pan taken from a rotating single position in Honolulu harbor.

Motion in source video sequences can be perceptually slowed down, speeded up, accented or removed in a processed video output file.

One interesting temporal effect is to rotate the time axis in the video so that what was the passage of time becomes horizontal or vertical spatial movement in an individual frame. This can be used to extract moving objects from a video sequence while removing the non-moving background detail.

Time axis rotation can also be used to generate abstract images where the individual object movement over the course of the video sequence shows up as trails or tendrils in the static output image.

Another cool alternative use of temporal processing effects is called stack filtering. Stack filtering works by using temporal ip ops to process a series of individual static images that are not sequential video frames. The example below shows some temporal stack filtering applied to a set of face images.

Temporal Image Operations are just one of the many new features available in Studio Artist 4. For more detailed information on working with the new Temporal Image Operations in Studio Artist 4 check out this tip.

Gallery Show

2009-11-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

Gallery Show is a new feature available in Studio Artist 4. You can use it in many different ways. The basic idea behind gallery show was to provide a way to put together customized continuous free standing generative art shows within Studio Artist. You can build custom sets of Studio Artist presets that either work as stand alone artistic imaging effects, or that work in combination to build more complicated visual processing over time. Gallery show will then work with these custom presets in a variety of different ways to generate a series of random processed images over time.

Gallery show gives you control over what kinds of source imagery is being processed during a gallery show run. It could be a single static image, a custom folder of source images, or an endless sequence of live video captures. You have control over how long gallery show pauses after completing a specific generated gallery show image, as well as different potential canvas adjustments that could be made prior to beginning the next generative gallery show image.

The original focus of gallery show was to provide free running generative art functionality for usage in an actual physical art gallery, or perhaps in a digital picture frame driven directly from Studio Artist. But once people started using gallery show it quickly became obvious that there were a lot of other potential uses beyond the initial idea for a free standing customizable art show.

Using Studio Artist's movie stream features, you can stream a gallery show output to either a movie file or to a folder of images. Each frame in the resulting movie (or image file if outputting an image stream) is a unique art image generated by the gallery show processing. Some people run gallery show unattended, and then cull through the resulting output after a few hours looking for 'keeper' images. So gallery show can be used as a way to automatically generate new artistic images.

Automatically generating new preset effects is another way to use gallery show. Everything that gallery show does can be recorded into a history or paint action sequence. So any individual processing associated with a particular gallery show output image can be regenerated and saved as a new preset effect.

Once we realized that there were many different unique ways to work with gallery show we started to enhance it to support some of these new uses customers discovered over time. Gallery show can now mutate or evolve existing presets to construct new ones during a gallery show run. So you are no longer limited to just working with existing sets of prebuilt presets. Gallery show could also be automatically generating unique new effects on the fly while it's running.

The notion of preset randomization was also extended to allow for arbitrary random effect generation for specific Studio Artist operation modes. This can be really useful to help understand the range of possible effects a given Studio Artist effect can generate.

I use this feature often by working with the current image operation effect and seeing what new kinds of visual effects pop up during the gallery show run. Working this way with specific ip op effects, or with the vectorizer surprised me by turning up new visual effects i was not even aware of, based on parameter adjustments or combinations i had not really delved into before.

There are a vast range of potential visual effects that Studio Artist is capable of generating, and automatic exploration tools like the new gallery show features are a useful addition that can help you explore all of the interesting nooks and crannies lurking within Studio Artist.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema Followup

2009-10-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux has been busy lately with live visual music performances using Studio Artist. The photo above was taken at his recent live performance at Festival du Nouveau Cinema with musician Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven. You can see Jean below (on the left) busy working with Studio Artist on an iMac during the live visual performance.

They also performed the same show the next night at the Case Obscura in Montreal. Here's some additional information on the Oct 21st show.

Pierre Jalbert, the composer of the "L'œil écoute" music for Jean's animated film that premièred in Pittsburgh last July, had that piece performed again in Houston on July 10. The photo above was taken at the Houston performance.

Thorrific at Largo Vista Gallery

2009-10-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Thor Johnson has an exhibit in Lago Vista Gallery at Richland College through November 25th. The work covers topics of spiritual symbology, excess and greed in the 80’s, popular culture satire, and interactive abstract videos developed from a layering of computer based processes.

Thor also gave a live performance at the gallery using Studio Artist on Oct 21st. There's some video of the opening performance and additional information on the show at this link.

The Making of Truth Blues

2009-10-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

Truth Blues is an award winning independent short film made by Studio Artist user Mike Snell of Blue Wall Design. The film showcases some really creative ways to incorporate Studio Artist processing into an animated film that go way beyond the normal process the entire video frame in one pass approach that is typically used. I recently spoke to Mike about the making of the film.

"As far as the workflow went-- It is a mix of roto-scoped HD video, Photoshopped stills, 3D animated objects and green screened people. The primary tools were Shake, Motion, Final Cut, Color and of course Studio Artist. I tried many, many variations in the Studio Artist Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) Editor to get to the look I was shooting for. That is one of the features I truly love about Studio Artist. You can build up effects and try many variations and then delete, double-up, tweek or add yet another pass all within the PASeq.

I have found that your software has given me a bit of an edge in a market that often kicks out things that look just like the things the guy down the street kicked out. After running each individual element through a Studio Artist PASeq I then composited everything in Motion adding camera moves, depth of field etc."

Breaking up the individual elements of an animation scene and then processing them individually with Studio Artist prior to compositing the final scene together is an interesting approach that has a really great visual look that is very unique. Mike used Motion for his final compositing of the individual Studio Artist processed animation elements.

A different approach that would have a very unique aesthetic look unlike any other compositing program would be to run multiple passes of alpha matted or green screened source elements through Studio Artist while painting into a master composition movie file. The PASeq would be constructed so that paint strokes would only occur starting from within the matted source elements, but could then spill outside of the original matte boundaries.

You could use a PASeq Content Context action step to do this in Studio Artist version 4, or content layer keyframes in Studio Artist 3.5. Because the individual elements would be individually painted onto the master movie layer you could incorporate smear and mixing effects as the individual processed scene elements were over-painted that you could never get in a conventional compositing program.

Mike also pointed out a killer feature of Studio Artist, which is that it is an environment for creating an endless variety of custom artistic effects. So when you buy Studio Artist you aren't just getting a set of canned stock effects that everyone in the universe is also using. You're getting the ability to customize and tweak to your hearts content. Either to modify existing effect presets, or to create amazing new effects no one has every seen before that have your own custom signature or aesthetic look.

I think that Mike achieved this with the overall look and feel of Truth Blues. It definitely looks like Studio Artist, but at the same time he has stamped his own personal vision and artistic aesthetic on that Studio Artist look and made it his own.

Make sure to look for Truth Blues at a film festival near you. You can lean more about Blue Wall Design here.

Truth Blues

2009-10-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

Truth Blues is an award winning film created by Studio Artist user Mike Snell. It features some great Studio Artist processing, and was the winner of the 2009 Kansas City Film Festival's Best of Feature Short and Best Animation awards. You can check out the trailer for Truth Blues at Mike's Blue Wall Design web site here. Mike's demos page on the Blue Wall Design site also includes some additional nice examples of Studio Artist generated video processing.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema

2009-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux will be doing a live visual performance happening in conjunction with acclaimed pianist Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven on October 15th at 9pm. Jean will be working with Studio Artist 4 live during the performance. For more information on the festival check out this link.

Here's a more detailed description of what to expect from the upcoming performance. 'Normally, when you present a piece, you specify your intentions. But in this case, it is the absence of intention that defines our performance. We are not hoping for anything in particular to take place since it is precisely the “whatever happens” that interests us—all the more so if it is beyond our will or our control. We can say that the performance will be comprised of certain elements. There will be music, both early (Frescobaldi, Dowland, Couperin) and contemporary (Jean-Luc Fafchamps, John Adams, Steve Reich, Maurice Ravel, Claude Ledoux, Collard-Neven). There will also be free improvisation, music that doesn’t yet exist but lives only in the realm of possibility. At the same time, there will be images, drawn and reworked, as well as photos that don’t tell a story, a sort of abstract impressionism. Lastly, there will be a painterfilmmaker and a pianist who (re)discovered each other and (re)connnected somewhere beyond time and space and who very much look forward to the unexpected possibilities of their visual and sonic interplay.'

Jean's Studio Artist generated film La Folia is also showing at the festival on October 10th and 14th.

Images According to John

2009-09-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user John Anderson will have some of his Studio Artist generated artwork published in the folio edition of Silvershotz magazine. Silvershotz is an international magazine that will be distributed to over 1200 art dealers and museums as well as book stands throughout the globe.

John has a great online gallery at imagesaccordingtojohn.com that showcases his Studio Artist artwork that is well worth checking out.

Rays of Light

2009-09-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Adrian Wagner recently completed his 90 minute film 'Rays of Light'. The film is a journey of light through the spiritual, sacred, and ritual landscapes of the ancient past when centers like Avebury, Callanish, and Stonehenge were created. Rays of Light combines specially composed music with unique moving painted art animation and a narrated account written by John Sharkey, author of the international best selling book Celtic Mysteries.

Adrian says that nearly the entire film was rendered using Studio Artist, with some sections combining together 7 or 8 different layers of auto-rotoscoped paint animation processing. Creating the 90 minute film was a major 8 year odyssey for Adrian, so it's awesome that the finished film is now completed.

Adrian discuses the making of the film and his use of Studio Artist in more depth on his web site. For more information on 'Rays of Light' check out this web link.

lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings

2009-09-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

"Lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings" is the result of a collaboration between Studio Artist user Jean Detheux and Mikel Kuehn. It will be shown at the Eastman Computer Music Center in Kilbourn Hall in Rochester New York on October 9th from 8 to 10pm. Jean also has another film entitled "L'ceil écoute" that will be shown with a live score by Pierre Jalbert at Zilkha Hall, The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, in Houston Texas on October 10th from 7:30 to 10pm. Both of these showings are part of associated visual music events in the respective cities. For more information, check out this Rochester link and this Houston link.

Two additional films By Jean, Shade Lost and Shade Recovered, were selected by the "Seeing Sound" event in the UK on September 19th in Bath. You can learn more about this event and the showing times for these 2 films here. For more information on Jean Detheux's work check out his web site here.

Compulsing Through a Tired Millenia: Digital Media by Thorrific

2009-08-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Thorrific has an art opening tonight August 23rd at the Metrognome Collective in Fort Worth Texas from 7 to 9 pm. There's a live band Twigs and Yarn afterwards from 9 -11pm. Thor's work always puts a smile on my face, so if you're in the Fort Worth area stop by and check it out. The gallery's normal viewing hours are from 4-9 pm thursday-sunday.

The online review states "caustic and needling, Thor's interactive artworks, animations, and static images plainly expose the irony of free-market existence and its sustenance of third world, war-torn suffering."

The Metrognome Collective was formed to educate, promote and assist visual artists, musicians, writers, performers and filmmakers, and is located at 4147 Meadowbroke Dr., Fort Worth, Texas. You can checkout their web site here.

Jean Detheux at Siggraph 2009

2009-07-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist animator Jean Detheux will be offering a course at Siggraph in New Orleans on Monday August 3rd from 8:30 to 10:15 am. The course is entitled 'The Making of "Shade Recovered" : Networked Senses at Play'. The course will cover topics like 'An exploration of sense-giving and sense-receiving in the visual aspect of visual music', 'A look at how music informs images, and images inform music', and 'Using Studio Artist in search of fortuitous accidents in time'.

Jean's Studio Artist animated film 'Shade Recovered' is also being presented in the curated reel of the Siggraph 2009 computer animation festival, and will be shown at scheduled times all week during Siggraph 2009. If you are curious about Jean's extensive body of work you can check out his web site at www.vudici.net.

Craig Deeley's Hand Drawn Media Presets

2009-07-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Long time Studio Artist user Craig Deeley is an animator and illustrator based in San Diego. An example of his unique artistic style is shown above. This image was grabbed from his art blog GreenLightCD, which is well worth checking out. Craig also has a lot of different hand drawn art examples posted on the Studio Artist User Forum in his photo posts.

Craig has graciously has put together a great collection of Studio Artist 4 paint presets that are especially designed for hand drawing. Studio Artist 4 includes an initial version of this custom preset collection which is called 'CD_hand_draw_media' in the factory preset collection. The categories in this preset collection correspond to different natural media tools and techniques and include things like charcoal, pencil, pastel, ink, watercolor, oils, etc.

You can of course access this manual drawing preset collection in the version 4 preset browser (shown below) like any other preset collection.

But Craig also put together an additional set of custom html documentation for the CD_hand_draw_media collection which you can access in the Studio Artist 4 help browser. This documentation includes detailed instructions and examples for each of the different presets.

You can use the custom CD_hand_draw_media help pages to learn more about what you can do with the individual preset in the collection. The help pages include active links which will load the associated paint presets when clicked.

The initial index page for the CD_hand_draw_media custom preset help pages is shown below. Note how it includes links to more detailed descriptive pages for each preset in the different categories in the collection. You can access Craig's custom preset help pages by pressing the Custom button in the toolbar at the top of the version 4 help browser.

After clicking on the Dry Media Charcoal link you get the following more detailed help page.

Each detailed description page includes examples of what drawing with the preset will look like (as shown above). The blue active links associated with each preset example will load the associated preset when pressed.

Craig's custom help pages for his CD_hand_draw_media paint collection are a great example of what you could do with your own preset collections in Studio Artist 4. Building custom preset help pages for use in the Studio Artist 4 help browser provides a great alternative to the preset browser palette for detailed custom preset organization and access.

Craig recently posted additional manual drawing presets that expand the initial set included with version 4. You can access these new presets for downloading in the Studio Artist User Forum's cool preset sharing group here. Be aware you need to be running Studio Artist 4 to use the presets discussed in this article.

Extending a Black and White MSG Sketch Effect to Color

2009-07-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

In a previous Anatomy of a MSG Effect post we discussed the inner workings behind programing a 2 step black and white sketch effect based on 2 different MSG presets combined together in a Paint Action Sequence (PASeq). In this post we'll talk about how that black and white preset could be easily modified to generate color sketch effects.

As you recall from the previous post, our black and white sketch preset consists of 2 different MSG presets. The first generates a thin line continuous sketch of the source image features. The second generated a mass sketch consisting of black circles distributed in an apollonian packing pattern.

For our color sketch effect, we'd like to retain the original black thin feature sketch and combine it with a modified version of the black circle mass sketch preset that renders a colored mass sketch image. The processor chain for the original MSG mass sketch preset is shown below in a screen shot of the MSG Advanced editor palette.

To keep things simple, we'll simply modify the mass sketch preset so it processes the 3 color channels of the source image one by one. So rather than generating a black and white sketch of the luminance, we generate 3 black and white sketches of the 3 source color channels that are then used as the color channels for the output of the MSG preset. This will generate a color mass sketch.

To do this all we have to do is first remove the last 1to3 processor and then duplicate the remaining 2 processors 2 additional times. We then have to modify the IO (input/output) connections for the 2 sets of duplicated processors so that they process the the red and blue channels of the source image. And we want them to output to the associated output color channels. The modified color sketch processor chain is show below.

Once we've edited the mass sketch MSG preset to generate colored output, we now need to edit the original 2 step PASeq so that it uses the new color sketch MSG preset. To do this, simply go to the Paint Action Sequence palette and option click the first keyframe for the second MSG action step.

This will record over the original action step settings with the new color preset you edited. You could also control click the second PASeq action step and run the Interface to Action Step context menu as an alternative to option clicking the first keyframe in the PASeq timeline.

You can export the new PASeq preset if you wish to save it as a new preset file. To run the new sketch effect simply press the play button in the PASeq editor. The result is shown in the image at the top of this post.

If you look closely at the color sketch image at the top of the post you can see that the mass sketch circles associated with the 3 color channels are visually aligned. You can see this by looking at how a black disc appears where ever a circle aligns on the 3 color fields. This alignment is due to the fact that you simply copied the original 1CAbstract7 processor 2 additional times but left the internal parameter settings the same in the copies as the original. If you modify the 2 copies so that they each have a unique random seed parameters then you would get the image below for output when running the preset.

From a distance these 2 images may look very similar. But if you zoom into this new image and compare it with the original one at the top of the post you can see that the circle alignment in the 3 color fields is now gone, along with the associated full black circles. These 2 images can look very different when printed because of the differences in how the colored circles are aligned.

Vector Output from MSG Presets

Another thing to keep in mind is that the vector output or vector printing options discussed in a previous post here for the black and white MSG sketch presets are not going to apply to this modified color sketch preset. You could generate a SVG file from this new MSG color sketch effect, but remember that the SVG vector output stream is based on what gets drawn internally in the MSG preset. The internal drawing is all black and white drawing into single color channels, not integral colored vector drawing. So the streamed SVG vector output would be 3 passes of overlaid black and white vector output. The colored appearance of the output of the MSG effect is due to the combination of the 3 color channels in the raster frame buffer, not due to integral colored vector drawing taking place in a single processor. There are other new MSG processors that do render full color using color vector drawing into 3 color channel output, and those MSG processors would generate colored vector output when streamed into a SVG file.

Dimmer Remissions

2009-06-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

Tom Dimuzio's side project Dimmer's latest album called Remissions features some cover artwork generated in Studio Artist 4. The cover image was generated using the new version 4 temporal image processing effects.

The process used to generate the cover photo started with taking a video sequence of a moving truck. The video source footage was then processing with the Studio Artist temporal scan tracker to encapsulate the motion in the video over time into a single static image. A diagonal slit scan setting was used for this particular image with a larger frame tracking setting than some of the other examples shown later in this post to give a courser rendition to the motion encapsulation.

Depending on how you setup the temporal scan tracker settings you can generate very different looking static images off of the same video source footage. One example of the same source video footage processed with different temporal scan tracker settings is shown below.

The next image below again uses the same video footage as the previous 2 images but was generated with different temporal scan tracker settings.

Depending on whether the scan tracker's slit scan setting tracks or inversely tracks object motion in the source video footage you can accent and encapsulate object motion in the output image or diminish or remove moving objects from the output image. You can see this in the 2 images above. Note how the motion of the semi-truck is very noticeable in the second image and almost totally removed from the first image.

There are additional temporal image processing effects in Studio Artist that can generate variations on these kinds of motion effects. And the temporal effects can be used to generate static output images or to generate processed video output.

If you would like to check out some of Tom Dimuzio's music or live performances you can check out his web site here.

Vector Output from MSG Effects

2009-06-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

One cool new hidden feature in Studio Artist 4 is the ability to generate vector output from some MSG based effects. I forgot to mention this surprise new feature in the previous blog post on the anatomy of a black and white sketch effect. That particular MSG based sketch effect can be output as a raster canvas image or can be output to SVG or PDF vector files for resolution independent display or printing.

This surprise MSG vector output feature is based on some new vector output capabilities built into Studio Artist 4. Previous versions of Studio Artist could output EPS vector files, and that old vector output support is still available. But it only really worked with the vectorizer and the paint synthesizer. And it was only available as a vector output capability as opposed to being based on direct vector drawing to the screen.

Studio Artist 4 has a number of new features that directly incorporate anti-aliased vector drawing. This includes new vector drawing functions in the paint synthesizer. And some new MSG processors that internally incorporate vector drawing into the effects they create. As it turns out, these new vector drawing MSG processors include the 1CAbstract6 and 1CAbstract7 processors used in the black and white sketch preset described in the previous blog post. Another example of a black and white sketch effect derived from MSG processing that can be output as a vector file is shown below.

The new SVG vector output functionality directly ties into the internal vector drawing engine used in Studio Artist 4. So any Studio Artist functions that incorporate internal vector drawing can be directly spooled to a SVG output file while they are being drawn to the screen. The trick is to just record them as steps in a Paint Action Sequence (PASeq). You can then use the Action : Generate SVG : with Paint Action Sequence menu command to generate a SVG vector file from the PASeq preset.

Remember that only action steps that can generate SVG vector output will work when generating SVG vector output. If some action steps do not support vector output then they will draw on the screen but will not generate any output vectors.

The Generate SVG vector output menus also include a Print with Paint Action Sequence menu. The normal File : Print menu command prints from the raster canvas frame buffer. This additional Action :Generate SVG : Print with Paint Action Sequence menu allows you to print directly from the SVG vector generation process when playing a PASeq. There's an option in that standard print dialog that allows for PDF file output (as opposed to printing),so that's how you could generate a PDF file from a MSG preset effect that supports vector output.

Anatomy of a MSG Effect

2009-06-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

I recently was asked how the image above was created. It was generated from a source image of a face that was processed in Studio Artist using a 2 step Paint Action Sequence (PASeq). Both action steps in the PASeq are custom MSG presets I constructed that work together to build the overall BW sketch effect.

The PASeq is a factory preset in Studio Artist 4 called Circle Rendition2, so the effect itself is just one of the thousands of preset effects that are built into Studio Artist. But i thought it would be instructive to delve into the construction of this particular effect in detail to give a feel for the hidden power that lurks within Studio Artist.

MSG stands for Modular Synthesized Graphics and is Studio Artist's modular image processing architecture. In version 4 there are over 500 different MSG image processing modules (called processors) that can be configured together to build an infinite variety of different image or video processing effects.

The particular effect discussed in this article is a black and white sketch effect composed of 2 different internal components. They are a thin line sketch that accents facial features and a mass rendering sketch composed of small black circles. These 2 individual stylistic components work together to build up the overall sketch effect. The Circle Rendition2 PASeq preset is shown below, and you can see that it consists of 2 different MSG action steps.

The thin line sketch is actually based on a MSG processor that solves the traveling salesman problem, but instead of generating an optimal travel route between cities it is plotting an optimal sketch route that travels between different facial features. So it's acting like an artist that does a complete sketch by placing the pen on the canvas and then doing a full sketch while never lifting the pen until the sketch is completed. So the entire sketch is composed of only a single continuously drawn path.

The mass sketch component is again based on a different MSG processor, one that tries to represent the mass of an image using individual black circles placed according to an apollonian packing scheme.

The screenshot below of the MSG Advanced Editor shows the processor chain used to construct the first thin line sketch MSG preset.

The TexFV processor is used to generate a texture or edge map from the source image. The Threshold processor then is used to clip the edge map image output of the TexFV processor. By adjusting the Threshold parameter associated with this Threshold processor you can change the complexity or detail of the sketch. The 1CAbstract6 processor is what generates the traveling salesman sketch based on the clipped edge map input image. It's parameter controls are shown below.

The final 1to3 processor just maps the single channel output of the 1CAbstract6 processor to the full RGB color output channels for the MSG preset.

To recap, the green channel of the source input to the MSG preset was processed to generate an edge map, that was then clipped and used as an input to a path generator that connects all of the clipped edge points in an optimal continuous path. The generated path is the thin line sketch effect. An example of the output from this particular MSG preset effect using a different source image is shown below.

Note how the sketch tries to travel to all of the image feature points without lifting the pen. This particular source image also had a lot of edge detail located at the boundaries of the image. You could use additional processing to remove those features from the sketch if desired.

The second MSG preset used to construct the mass sketch based on apollonian packed circles is very similar in nature to the first preset described above. The preset' processor chain can be seen below.

A key difference between this preset and the previous one is that an edge map is not constructed as a part of the effect. Instead the processing takes place directly using the green source channel as input to a ThresholdRamp MSG processor. Again, the previous preset was trying to generate a sketch to represent the source image details (or edges) while this second preset is trying to represent the mass (or luminance) of the source image with black circles. The ThresholdRamp processor acts to boost the contrast of the mass sketch. By adjusting the Threshold and Radius parameters you could control the amount of contrast enhancement, or dial in a more linear tone range to the sketch.

The 1CAbstract7 processor is what generates the apollonian packed circles. Apollonian packing is a mathematical technique for optimally close packing circles into a constrained area, and has a nice stylized appearance. The output of the ThresholdRamp processor is the input to the 1CAbstract7 process that renders it's input using apollonian packed circles. If you didn't care about contrast enhancement you could skip the ThresholdRamp processor step and just use the source image as a direct input into this processor. Again, the last step is a 1to3 processor which just maps the single channel output image into a 3 channel color output for the MSG preset.

The output of this second MSG mass sketch preset is shown below.

Pay close attention to the packing of the circles. the circles touch but never overlap. The final sketch output from the 2 MSG presets discussed above working together to build a finished sketch effect is shown below.

The more technically sophisticated reader may be wondering why the green source channel was used for creating the 2 component sketch effects since it's not really the source luminance but just a crude approximation. You could easily modify these 2 presets to work off of the source image luminance directly. To do this, you would use a RGBtoYIQ processor as the first step in the processor chain, and then use the Y channel output as the input for the subsequent processing steps.

Also, there's no reason why you couldn't construct a single MSG preset that incorporated the internal components of both of the presets described above into a single preset. But the nice thing about using a PASeq to build up an effect like this is that you can work with a library of MSG presets that are easy to understand and build up specific components that work together to create a more complicated effect. Building the PASes is as simple as running the individual processing effects one at a time while PASeq recording is turned on.

Expanding Vectorizer Region Effects

2009-06-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

One powerful feature of the Studio Artist Vectorizer is Region Effects.

There's a wide variety of different stylistic effects you can create by working with different Region Effect Options. Region Effect modify the shapes generated by the vectorizer processing. After stylizing the vector region shapes, when they are overlaid on the canvas they typically will no longer provide total coverage. There are different background color options you can pick to provide a solid color background the stylized shapes can be overlaid on top of. An example of stylized vector shapes on top of a black background is shown below.

Suppose you want to create a stylized vector effect that covers the entire canvas. How can you do this?

There are several different approaches. A simple one is to do 2 vectorizer passes. The first pass uses no region effects. The second pass uses a region effect with the Background Fill option in the vectorizer Drawing control panel set to None. The 2nd pass overlays it's stylized regions on top of the previous non-stylized vectorizer output which does cover the entire canvas.

A different 2-pass approach is to first interpolate the solid background color areas with adjacent region colors using an Image Operation (Ip Op), and then rerun the vectorizer to vectorize the filled in solid color regions. An easy way to do this is to use the Geodesic Interpolation Ip Op. The settings i used to fill in the black background areas by extrapolating the existing color informaiton in the image is shown below.

You want to make sure you use the Pixel Raster Fill setting for the Canvas Render Option if you will be interpolating in the solid background color areas with an Ip Op. You use this setting so that you get hard edges at the region boundaries.

The Vector Anti-Alias setting will provide smooth anti-aliased edges. If you try to use this setting's vectorizer output with the Geodesic Interpolation Ip Op you will fill the solid background areas with the anti-aliased region rim color which is not the same as the solid interior color.

After filling in the solid color background, you may be finished or you may need one more step. If you were just interested in generating a raster version of the vectorizer effect then you are finished. If your goal was to generate vector output like an eps or svg file, then you now need to re vectorize the raster interpolated canvas created by the Geodesic Interpolation Ip Op.

Do do this, you want to use the Flat Color vectorizer Technique, as shown below. This technique assumes the input is already composed of flat colored regions and vectorizes them accordingly. Note that we are using the current layer as the vectorizer source since we are processing the output of the geodesic interpolation ip op that is in the current layer. You also want to make sure you turn off Region Effects when doing this second flat color technique vectorizer pass.

The final stylized vector output is shown below. Note how the stylized image totally covers the canvas with no show through to a solid color background.

Building Photo Mosaics Using MSG Evolver

2009-05-27T14:09:00.001-07:00

Many Studio Artist users forget about the MSG Evolver application that also ships with Studio Artist 3.5. While MSG Evolver is a great tool for building MSG presets, you can also use it's Art Mapper functionality to create photo mosaic imagery or even movie mosaics. While you can also create photo mosaic images using Studio Artist's paint synthesizer, MSG Evolver has a number of unique photo mosaic generation features associated with it's art mapping functionality. This post is going to quickly run through the basics of using MSG Evolver to create photo mosaic images.

Building photo mosaics in MSG Evolver uses an image database called a Poster Index as opposed to a movie brush like you would in Studio Artist. To create an image database you need to run the Process : ArtMap : Generate Poster Index menu command.

You will first be asked to choose a folder. This is the folder you want to have the images stored in that you are using to generate the sub images in your photo mosaics. You are then asked to name a post and index file. Evolver will then run through analyzing all of the images in the folder you specified. You will see them flash in the source area. After Evolver is done analyzing the images in the folder it will ask you to name a FV (feature vector) file.

The 3 files you named (poster, index, and feature vector) make up the image database Evolver uses for art mapping. A good naming convention is to use the same base name for all 3 and tag -poster, -index, or -fv on the end of the name.

Once you have generated your image database files, you need to tell Evolver to make them the current database. To do this you run the File : Preference : Choose ArtMap Poster Index menu command. You will be asked to choose 3 different files, the Poster, Index and FV files that make up the database. Choose the files you just generated from your custom folder of images.

Once you have your custom database loaded as the Evolver ArtMap Poster Index preference you can start generating photo mosaic images using the ArtMap functionality. First, you will want to switch the Mode popup to ArtMap. There are 4 different Option controls panels in the ArtMap mode.

The Arrangement controls let you choose the kind of photo mosaic effect you want. Arrangement referring to the arrangement of the sub images that make up the photo mosaic effect. The Alg (algorithm) control option is the main option to adjust for choosing different kinds of photo mosaic effects. Each of the different algorithms arranges the sub images in different ways. The best way to get a sense of how they look is to try them out.

The Color option control panel lets you specify how the individual blocks will be colored. You will want to set the color Mode popup to Poster Database Image for creating straight photo mosaic effects. The Art Mapper can also create mosaic images using the current MSG preset, but we'll ignore that functionality for this particular example. There are additional Color Shift options that can modify the colors of your database sub images to better represent the source image.

The ArtMap process will try to render the current source image, so you should use the File : Open Source Image menu command to load the source image you want to represent as a photo mosaic image now.

When you have setup your Artmap controls and loaded your source image, you can then press the ArtMap Source button to generate your photo mosaic image. You can use the Edit : Resize Big Canvas menu to specify a size for Evolver's big canvas, which is where the photo mosaic image is generated. Depending on how you setup the ArtMap controls you can generate a wide range of different photo mosaic effects.

This has been a quick introduction into using MSG Evolver to create photo mosaic images or special effects. For more information on using MSG Evolver to create photo mosaic images, you should check out the appropriate sections of the MSG Evolver USer Guide pdf, which is in the doumentation folder in your main Studio Artist 3.5 folder.

Michael Wright Update

2009-05-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Michael Wright is one of the pioneer artists mentioned in a recent article by new media art historian Patric D Prince in the spring 09 issue of the ”Art Journal” published by the College Art Association. The Prince article “Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of Digital Printmaking in America” is one of three features dealing with early digital art making covered in the spring issue of the “Art Journal”. Wright is quoted and his late 90s image “I, Be, Am” is displayed.

Michael is a professor in the Digital Media and Liberal Studies Programs at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He began to explore Digital Media in the mid 1980s on an Amiga computer, and has been a big Studio Artist user for many years.

I really enjoyed Michael's Portrait Virus project that he had running at Siggraph for several years. Michael used Studio Artist’s iSight source mode to capture a video image of a person visiting the Siggraph Guerilla Studio on the fly and then used Studio Artist to generate a painted portrait of the captured video frame. These images were then printed and mounted on the wall of the Guerilla Studio to create a larger composite mural of the individual portraits created over several days, as seen below.

Here's a close up of some of the individual paintings.

I've always wanted to generate a movie brush using the individual portrait virus paintings and then do some photo mosaic portraits based on that movie brush. Maybe I can convince Michael to do that for LA Siggraph next summer.

Tucker Stilley at Monte Vista Projects

2009-04-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Tucker Stilley (aka New Jack Rasputan) has an on-going exhibition at the Monte Vista Projects in LA. The exhibition is part installation, part interactive performance. The walls are covered with digital prints of various sizes, rendered in a loose, lively, collage-like style, as well as passages of printed text — fragments of his own conversation, primarily, as spoken through a computer. The interactive element comes by way of a monitor with a live feed to Stilley’s residence in Pasadena, where he has remained during gallery hours through the duration of the show, watching the activity in the gallery via surveillance camera, making work, demonstrating his methods and chatting with anyone who wishes to communicate.

The exhibition is part of a larger project, “The Permanent Record of NewJack Rasputin,” collected under the aegis of a website at web.mac.com/the.permanent.record. The live feed 'Hole in Space' can be checked out here, or via the site thepermanentrecord.ning.com.

The LA Times has a great review of the exhibition you can check out here. Tucker's work is pretty inspiring, and it's great that he's using Studio Artist to generate it. You can also check out some of Tucker's additional work via the Studio Artist User Forum here.

Jean Detheux April Updates

2009-04-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux has recently posted a nice collection of some of his newer Studio Artist animation clips to his web site www.vudici.net. The clips also include some of his live improvised visual performances in addition to the rendered animation pieces. You can check out all this new material at this link.

Christopher Werronen's Stereoscopic 3D Studio Artist Films

2009-04-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

Studio Artist user Christopher Werronen has been exploring creating Stereoscopic 3D cartoon style video effects using Studio Artist. There are a few people I'm aware of who have used the Studio Artist paint synthesizer to create 3D stereoscopic painted imagery but this is the first user i'm aware of who is creating cartoon style stereoscopic 3d films.

Christopher works with a twin Canon HV-30 HDV camera rig for shooting his stereographic source footage. The cameras are first mounted on a slide bar, something like a tripod plate that holds 2 cameras at adjustable distances from each other. The minimum distance used on the shoots was 72mm centers, just wider than the 65mm typical of adult human ocular spread. For long vista shots this can extend to a maximum slide bar width of 104mm. The relative angles of the cameras during shooting, as well as the separation between the images as they are combined in post, show depth when viewed through cyan and amber glasses easily and inexpensively available online.

Christopher then processes the 2 matching channels of his raw footage one at a time through Studio Artist using a Paint Action Sequence designed to create a cartoon style effect. He then uses Nuke in post to recombine the procesed footage into a single color coded anaglyph stereoscopic film, which can be viewed in stereo with colored stereoscopic glasses. Here's an example of a stereoscopic color anaglyph frame image.

Christopher has posted several different stereoscopic film examples created with Studio Artist in the user forum here. You will want to wear stereoscopic glasses while watching these to get the 3D effect. For more information on the specifics of Christopher's stereoscopic video generation workflow you can check out this article.

In reading the article on how Christopher creates the final stereoscopic films i'm wondering whether a lot of the processing he's doing in Nuke could be done directly in Studio Artist. For example, you could use Studio Artist image operations to combine the 2 processed left and right movies into a single color coded anaglyph movie. We'll try to explore that as well as how to create stereoscopic paintings in more depth in a future blog post.

Christopher is also looking for other Studio Artist users to collaborate with for creating 3D painted videos. You can contact him here.

Creating Photo Mosaic Effects in Studio Artist

2009-04-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

There's an extremely wide range of different photo mosaic style photo effects that can be generated using Studio Artist. These include the traditional regular block photo mosaics to more exotic adaptive irregular shaped photo mosaics or even movie mosaics (movies made up of a collection of smaller movies).

The image below is an example of a photo mosaic image created by Studio Artist user Charis Tsevis. You can check out more of his work here.

There are many different approach you can take to creating photo mosaic imagery in Studio Artist. This post will provide an overview of some of these different techniques.

To build a custom photo mosaic image in Studio Artist, you first need to convert a folder of your custom images into a Quicktime movie. Each frame in the movie file corresponds to one of your custom images. The movie file can then be used in Studio Artist as a movie source brush and/or movie background texture.

Converting a folder of images to a movie file is straightforward in Studio Artist. You build a simple 1 step Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) that sets the canvas to the source image. You then run the action menu command that processes a folder of images with a paint action sequence to a movie file.

Once you have a movie file containing the sub-images you want to use in your photo mosaic, you can then import that movie file as a movie source brush or movie background texture. The easiest way to do this is to use an existing photo mosaic preset and then run the 'File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush...' menu to import your custom movie brush to replace the existing one in the photo mosaic paint preset.

The 3.5 tutorial movie disk #2 includes tutorials on 'Converting a Folder of Images to a Movie with a PASeq' and 'Photo Mosaic Paint Effects Using a Movie Brush'. These 2 tutorial movies explain the 2 step process i described above to creating a custom photo mosaic preset in much more detail.

There's also a section in the Studio Artist 3.5 User Guide on page 370 called 'Using Movie Brushes to Generate Photo Montage Effects' that explains the 2 steps described above.

There are a number of different paint presets in the '3.5 Collection' and 'Graffiti Brushes' category that can be customized to create regular grid style photo mosaic effects.

To create irregular adaptive shape style photo mosaics you can use one of the path start regionize generators in the paint synthesizer along with the 'region fill as brush' pen mode. There's a news blog post here that includes some example brick wall photo mosaic presets of this type. Again, you can easily customize these presets by using your own custom movie brush.

You can also use the Studio Artist Vectorizer or different Image Operations to create adaptive shapes from a source image that the paint synthesizer could then fill in with a movie source brush to create unique photo mosaic effects. Using the vectorizer to drive paint synth regionization is discussed here.

You can create movie brushes with embedded alpha channels. This is a different approach to creating non-regular photo mosaics where the individual images in the mosaic have individual shapes that are based on an alpha channel for each image. An example and explanation of how to do this is shown in this post. Note that you should use Safari to read this older blog (or if you use Firefox make sure your default text preference is set to something other than black to see the text).

Studio Artist 3.5 also ships with a separate application called MSG Evolver. MSG Evolver includes something called the Art Mapper, which can be used to create photo mosaic effects from a database of images. Instead of using a movie brush, you use a photo database created in Evolver to store your custom images. For more information on MSG Evolver check out this post. For detailed information on using MSG Evolver check out the MSG Evolver User Guide pdf.

To create a custom image database you run the 'Process : ArtMap : Generate Poster Index...' menu. This menu command will ask you to select a folder of images and will then have you name 3 files it will generate (the poster, feature vector, and index files). These 3 generate files are the image database that Evolver uses to create photo mosaic effects. Once your image database is created, you can then use the 'File : Preferences : Choose ArtMap Poster Index...' menu command to select the 3 files associated with your image database. You can build different image databases that access different sets ofimages and use the preference menu to swap them in and out of Evolver.

You should read 'Chapter 5: ArtMap' of the MSG Evolver User Guide for more detailed information on using the ArtMapper. The section of this chapter titled 'Working with Photo Databases in a Poster Index' described in more detail how to generate a custom image database for use in Evolver as described above.

You can also use MSG Evolver to create movie mosaics (movies created from a collection of smaller movies). To do this you just build your Evolver database from a folder of movie files as opposed to a folder of images. For more information on movie mosiacs check out these links post and post1. You can also create movie mosaics directly in Studio Artist using a movie source brush and 2D indexing into the movie brush.

You can also use Studio Artist to create moving photo mosaic animations. An example of this is shown in this post.

Note: Some of the links on this blog entry point to the old Studio Artist 3.5 blog. As mentioned above you should really use Safari to read those older blog posts. If you do use Firefox, you will need to make sure your Firefox default text color preference is set to something other than black in order to read the text properly.

Visual Music Marathon 2009

2009-04-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

If you are in or near New York City on April 11th be sure to check out the 2009 Visual Music Marathon. The marathon includes works from Studio Artist animators Jean Detheux, Michael Theodore and Dennis Miller. The Visual Music Marathon will be held at the Visual Arts Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, New York City.

The works in the Marathon represent a vast range of approaches to “visual music,” from pieces in which the images and music are directly tied by the sharing of parameters, to those in which the images “interpret” the music (or vice versa), to works where the visuals are edited in tight synchrony with cues in the music.

For more information including the complete schedule check out this link.

Art Pepper's Studio Artist Music Video

2009-03-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

If you have not heard of the legendary alto sax player and jazz musician Art Pepper you really should check out some of his music. And a great way to get started is to watch this new music video put together by his wife and long time Studio Artist user Laurie Pepper.

Laurie uses various Studio Artist paint and morphing effects throughout this video. Laurie also runs a record label called 'Widows Taste' which is dedicated to keeping Art's music alive by releasing great live concert and bootleg recordings of Art's music. So while Art is no longer physically with us his music will continue on for new (and old) generations of fans. The cds are really great, if you are into jazz music they are well worth checking out.

Simulating Pantograph Relief Etchings

2009-03-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

Long time Studio Artist users know that i'm a big fan of looking for ways to use Studio Artist to emulate various archaic printing technologies of the past. Richard Benson's book on 'The Printed Picture' has a section that talks about the use of the pantograph in the 19th century to make reproductive etchings of commemorative relief medals, which were basically metal casts made to honor notable occasions and famous people.

The pantograph was a mechanical device primarily designed and used to reproduce a physical drawing at a varied scale.

But for these particular historical etchings that reproduce a 3 dimensional relief medallion as a printed 2D image, the pantograph translated vertical modulations of the medal's surface into variously spaced lines scored into an etching ground, which was then used to make the etching print. Another way to think about this is that the physical height of the metal surface modulated the spatial positioning of the etching line as it was traced over the course of the drawing surface.

So having read this fascinating explanation of this obscure historical process, it seemed like a no brainer to knock off some pantograph relief etching simulations using Studio Artist's vast artistic tool chest of presets and features. I've included some simple examples here. The image at the top of this post is a little more sophisticated than the simpler pantograph simulation seen below. It incorporates an additional width modulation of the etching line also based on the source luminance.

This simple pantograph simulation is just modulating the horizontal positioning of the vertical etching lines based on the local spatial luminance of the source image. You can click on the individual images to see them at full size, because the detail of the thin lines gets obscured when they are displayed at partial resolution in the blog text.

When i started this whole process i spent a lot of time trying to simulate creating a 3D relief image from the source image to use as the modulation for the pantograph. The Gradient ip op is typically one approach you could use to do that. So originally i was using a Gradient Ip Op processed version of the source image for the modulation. I used the Smooth ip op to clean up noise artifacts in the gradient image. But as you can see in the image below, the kind of modulation you get in the pantograph simulation is a lot more wiggly and while using source luminance is perhaps a cheater solution, it actually looked better to my eyes than trying to build a fake 3D relief of the source image.

So for this particular example the classic motto KISS (keep it simple stupid) applies. But i think you could generate some really interesting artwork by spending some time generating extreme image transformations for the pantograph modulation. A smoothed Convex Hull ip op for example might lead to some really interesting results. And i spent a lot of time working with combining the pantograph etching technique with other outline sketch effects and generated some great results. We'll leave these advanced approaches as exercises for the curious for now.

All of these pantograph experiments can be found in the new Factory PASeq presets in upcoming version 4 of Studio Artist.

Paul Perlow's Letter Project

2009-02-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

Studio Artist user Paul Perlow has recently started a series of Studio Artist renditions for the alphabet. I think the quality of the images are quite stunning and wanted to share them.

I also like the notion of projects like this that create a situation that provides focus for a series of artistic works. The 'Apple a Day' project discussed here last year is another example of setting up a creative situation to inspire daily artistic work. So i wanted to pass that idea along as well since it might give you some creative inspiration for your own unique Studio Artist project.

Film Festival Updates

2009-02-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to mention some recent Studio Artist film festival activity. Studio Artist user Donna Kuhn had her short film Spinning shown recently at the Disposable Film Festival in San Francisco. For additional information you can check out Donna's blog, the festival, or her film.

Studio Artist user Jean Detheux will be screening his new film Shade Recovered at the "Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois" festival. It will screen on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 4:00 p.m., at the Cinémathèque québécoise (salle Claude Jutra). You can learn more about Shade Recovered here, and the festival here.

I also wanted to point out an interesting interview with Jean done by Studio Artist animator Sharon Katz you can check out here.

The Joy of Displacement Mapping

2008-12-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

Displacement mapping is an extremely useful technique to master and include in your digital effects toolbox. By displacement, we typically mean that individual pixels in the processed image are generated from different spatially modulated positions in the image. So you can think of displacement mapping as being a warp process.

A second image is used to define the spatial modulation (or displacement) of the individual pixels. This means that the modulation image's luminance is used to map to another pixel location. This mapping is the warp taking place for that pixel location in the displacement mapping process. A black modulation pixel would perform no mapping, a white modulation pixel would perform the maximum amount of spatial mapping, gray values in between would perform variable displacement from the min to max values specified for the effect.

There are a number of different ways to generate displacement mapping in Studio Artist. There's the Displacement Image Operation, which can be configured to achieve a wide range of different displacement mapping effects. You can also set the current region selection to the image you wish to modulate with, and then use the Selection Modulate options for Interactive Warp to interactively perform displacement mapping of the current canvas layer by the current selection image. You can choose translate and rotate selection modulate interactive warps.

Displacement mapping an image by itself is a useful effect. Using random noise from the Smart texture Ip Op or the Texture Synthesizer as the modulation image is another useful technique. The Texture Synthesizer has a specific Displace Effect Type that performs displacement mapping based on the texture field being generated by the texture synthesizer. The Displacement Ip Op also has Algorithm options that use uniform random noise or the texture synthesizer output as a modulation source among the many different options provided there.

The Smart Displace Ip Op is another effect that performs displacement mapping, and depending on how you configure it's adjustable parameters can achieve a wide range of different effects. There are also a number of different MSG processors that perform different kinds of displacement mapping.

I recently was asked about how i achieved the effect shown in the image above, which is a single frame from a movie test i posted on the Studio Artist User Forum. The face images in the movie appear to be made out of glass or transparent plastic in front of a colored graffiti static background.

This particular effect was actually achieved by temporal displacement mapping, which means that the face image was used to modulate into a range of different frames of a movie which consisted of a stack of graffiti images. So the displacement for a particular output pixel is being generated by movement through time in a movie as opposed to spatial movement. Temporal displacement is one of the many different Temporal Ip Ops available in Studio Artist 4. However, you can achieve a very similar effect in previous versions of Studio Artist using a more typical spatial displacement mapping in a static graffiti image.

One thing to be aware of to make this particular effect work well is to have the faces or other objects in the source movie you are processing be in front of a flat colored static background. This movie is going to be used as the modulation source for the displacement mapping. You can do this by loading your face movie into the source area. The static image you want to use as the background for the glass effect needs to be loaded into the canvas for each frame of the animation.

In version 3.5 you could use a content keyframe in the layer palette to do this. In version 4 you would use a PASeq Content Context action step. In both cases the same static background image will be loaded into the canvas current layer prior to performing the displacement mapping. The displacement mapping will be performed on the static background image in the current layer, and the source of the displacement modulation will be the source (which in our example is the face movie).

The screen snapshot below shows the face movie loaded into the source area and the editable controls for the Displacement Ip Op.

Note that the Canvas is specified for the To Be Displaced option. The Algorithm is the Fixed Angle, Ip Source Modulates Amt. And the Ip Source is set to the Source Image. So these settings specify that the source movie will displacement modulate the canvas image. The output of these displacement settings applied to a static graffiti background image in the current canvas layer is shown below. The effect created makes the source movie frame appear to be rendered as transparent glass in front of the static graffiti background.

You actually can perform a temporal displacement warp in a movie in Studio Artist 3.5. The trick is to load the movie as a pixel indexed background texture in the paint synthesizer. Pixel Indexed movie background textures index the movie for each pixel of the paint nib being rendered (as opposed to once for the entire nib for a normal movie background texture). So you can set the Paint Fill Setup Fill From option to use the background texture to paint with the modulated background texture movie. With a luminance 1D Frame Mod setting you would be modulating the background texture movie using the source luminance.

You can then use the source luminance to frame index the movie. And you can use region fill as brush pen mode with a Full Screen Generator option in the Region as Brush Mode control panel to fill in the entire canvas with a single paint step. This is a useful trick whenever you want to configure the paint synthesizer to generate effects that process the entire canvas in a single paint step.

We've barely scratched the surface of what you can do with displacement mapping. So it's worth the time to explore this technique and learn all the different things you can do with it. I often use subtle amounts of random noise modulated displacement mapping to subtly distress or age a painted canvas as a final post processing step. The best way to get a handle on this effect is to experiment yourself with different processing options and different source modulators.

Iterative Paint Strategies

2008-11-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

I've recently been exploring the notion of using Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) keyframing to build iterative paint strategies. As we have discussed in previous posts, a paint strategy is a series of different steps that work together over time to build up a particular artistic style or emulative technique.

Using the PASeq timeline and it's keyframe interpolation capabilities can be a great shortcut to help you build different iterative paint strategies. You can just specify the start and end keyframes for different action steps and then let the PASeq playback parameter interpolation engine do all of the intermediate parameter adjustments for you as the PASeq plays back over a series of frames. As opposed to having to manually make all of those adjustments over the course of the different steps needed to implement your iterative paint strategy. And because the complete paint strategy is encapsulated in a recorded PASeq you can save it as a PASeq preset to use later at the press of a button.

Here's an example of the PASeq i used to construct the paint strategy used to render the image at the top of this post.

The paint strategy iterates over 10 animation frames. The red squares correspond to recorded keyframes. Note that the 'Image Compressor' and the 'PaintBezLayer' action steps have keyframes at the beginning and the end of the animation. This means that the associated parameter values will smoothly interpolate from the start keyframe values to the end keyframe values over the course of the 10 frame animation used to build the iterative paint strategy.

Black keyframes are mute keyframes. When a PASeq action step is muted it will not playback in subsequent frames until another red keyframe is reached as the animation progresses. Note that the mute keyframes in the first 2 action steps are used to setup an initial starting canvas that is then painted over in the various cycles of the iterative paint strategy. The image compressor action step is muted for the first frame only because i want to have dark paint strokes on the canvas before it processes the canvas and i need to have completed one animation cycle to do that.

The concept behind this particular paint strategy is to start with a color simplified canvas and then over paint with bezier paths derived from the source edges. The edge painting starts out highly distorted and over time becomes more and more accurate. The texture synthesizer and 2 water smear and drip paint presets are used to soften and drip the previously painted canvas as a part of each iterative cycle.

You can see the iterative paint strategy progress from start to finish in the animation below.

Note that this particular approach is an example of the more general category of 'loose to tight' paint strategies. This could be as simple as starting with a large brush size to rough in the canvas and then using a progressively smaller brush size over time to fill in increasing detail. This particular example is a little more involved because in addition to a paint step that gets progressively more refined there are also a series of additional steps that modify the previously drawn canvas. This water drip and intelligent texture synth smearing is working to create a complex organic paint texture over the course of the iterative cycles that build up the final output image.

There are endless variations to how you can construct an iterative paint strategy. Another concept i have been exploring recently is to build different tone ranges over the course of the iterative cycle. So you could start at the mid tones and then work over the course of the animation to fill in the highlights and shadows. Or vice versa. Depending on your source image, one direction to build the tone range fill may be more effective than the other. The range of potential effects for this kind of approach can get quite complex when you introduce additional action steps that modify the previously drawn canvas as a part of the iterative cycle.

Brick Wall Photo Mosaic - Example Presets

2008-11-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

Movie Brushes are a powerful feature in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer. You can use them to create endless varieties of textural patterns in your paintings and photo mosaic imagery created with the paint synthesizer. This could take the form of full photo mosaic effects that try to reproduce the source image with a series of sub images that are appropriately positioned to represent the source image. Or it could be used for more subtle background texturing where the individual movie images are colorized on the fly by the paint synthesizer.

In response to some questions in a Studio Artist User Forum post recently about building brick wall textures i decided to post some preset examples. These examples are all Studio Artist 3.5 presets and you can download them here.

All of these examples use the same brickBrush movie file for a movie source brush. The brickBrush movie was created by first placing a series of photos of brick walls in a folder. I then made a simple Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) that sets the canvas to the source image. I then ran an Action menu command to process a folder of images with the PASeq to a movie file. This generates a movie file that contains all of the images in the folder you choose to process, in this case the brick wall images i wanted to use for my movie brush. You can run the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush menu to open a movie file as a new movie source brush.

The different presets show off different mosaic styles you can create using the region as brush pen mode in conjunction with Studio Artist's path start regionization features. Path Start regionization has been discussed on this blog recently. When running a path start regionization preset, Studio Artist first visually analyses your source image and then paints it as a series of individual regions. The painting could be done with paint strokes that fill the generated regions in various ways, or in the case of these preset examples the regions themselves are filled in with individual movie frames from the movie source brush.

The trick with using a movie source brush with the region as brush pen modes is to set the Brush Option control in the Region as Brush Mode control panel to Alpha Only. Normally the Region as Brush pen mode replaces the source brush with it's generated region when drawing. But you don't want to replace your movie source brush, just build an alpha channel for it, and this setting will do that. Of course, you need to switch your Brush Type to Source Brush Alpha to take advantage of this. And you always need to make sure the PathStartRegionize control in the Region as Brush Mode control panel is turned on when using path start regionization with this pen mode.

In addition to the different paint presets included in the preset example download, there is also the movie file used for the movie source brush (called brickBrush). You should place the brickBrush file in the Brush folder in your main Studio Artist folder so that Studio Artist will be able to find it when running these presets. If you don't, you will get a dialog asking you to find the movie file.

There is also a paseq preset that shows how to build regionization painting off of regions generated by the vectorizer. This technique on working with the vectorizer to define regions for the paint synthesizer was discussed in this previous blog entry.

By using the run the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush menu you can load your own custom movie files into any of these presets and build photo mosaic effects with your own set of custom images. There are many different ways to build photo mosaic effects in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer. Check out the Graffiti Brushes category in the 3.5 Collection of factory paint synthesizer presets for a completely different example of how to work with movie brushes to create mosaic effects.

Constructing a Paint Strategy

2008-11-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with a Studio Artist user recently about different approaches to building 'paint strategies', and thought it was worth repeating some of that conversation here for other users. By 'paint strategies', i mean the different approaches one can take to building up a custom art process to create some kind of finished piece of art in a particular aesthetic style. Often paint strategies are about trying to emulate traditional art techniques, but there's nothing that restricts you to emulating existing techniques. The goal is simply to figure out how to get from point A (a blank canvas) to point B (the finished painting in the particular style you want to achieve).

A common technique one would use if working with real paint is to first rough in the image with a large brush, and then add detail with progressively smaller brushes. Building this kind of paint strategy in a Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) is pretty straightforward. You start with the preset of your choice using a large brush size, and record an initial PASeq action step that roughs in the background of your painting. Then you progressively edit the max brush size in the Brush Modulation control panel to reduce the brush size and record additional PASeq action steps to build detail.

It's often common to reduce the path length (path shape control panel) as well as the brush size (brush modulation control panel) when building detail. You could also work with Path Start and Path End parameters to focus the painting on the edge structure of the source image. There are some paint synthesizer macro edits to help you do this if you are unfamiliar with paint synth editing. There was a tutorial presented here recently on abstraction vs realism in painting, and any of the detail focusing techniques discussed in that tutorial could also be used as a part of your paint strategy to build detail in your finished painting.

If you are working with manual painting as opposed to action painting, you could edit an autodraw interactive paint preset so that pen pressure or tilt modulates the max brush size and path length. Then you can directly control the resolution of the autodrawn paint strokes as you work with the pen over time to start out roughing in the image and then to build detail. The Digital Street Artist video tutorials show off this approach.

One alternative to roughing in an image is to start with a lower resolution canvas, paint it in, use Supersizer interpolation to increase (upsize) the canvas resolution, and then paint in detail in the higher resolution canvas with your original paint preset. For some kinds of paint effects, using an image operation like Color Simplify might be an alternative to using a paint preset for an initial roughing in of the canvas that then gets painted on top of with subsequent strategy steps.

Another approach to roughing in is to use path start regionization. Path Start Regionization works by analyzing the source image, breaking it up into different regions, and then painting them all in a single paint action step. Depending on what you are trying to achieve, this might be a better approach to roughing in the image than the normal scattered paint strategy of most paint presets. There was a tutorial posted recently that discusses some paint regionization techniques.

One example of emulating a traditional art process might be reproducing a custom watercolor paint effect. In the real world, you might start with a textured paper and apply a colored background wash with a large brush. Then you might fill in details with a finer brush. Detailed edges might then be drawn with a fine black pen or pencil line. This series of different painting steps could be thought of as a watercolor paint strategy.

In the example above, the textured water color paper could be simulated by designing a background texture in the paint synthesizer. There are a number of ways to do this.

You could adjust the settings on the Background Texture parameter pane to simulate a particular paper texture. Or, try scanning a real paper texture and load that into the Background Texture as an image texture. As a different approach, build a Paint Action that applies a random brush to the canvas with a random scan pattern. You could even build a series of image processing steps that generate a textured Canvas. This Canvas could then be loaded into the current region, and used to modulate the Paint Fill.

There are a large number of factory presets that could be used to generate a blurry watercolor background wash. The brush size could then be adjusted to provide a smaller, harder edge brush. The Path Start and Path End parameters could be set so that autodrawn paths would follow the source image edges. Path length and brush size could be reduced again for more detail rendition. The paint source color could be switched to black for the fine detail edge black lines. Then, a Canvas Spread Water Preset could be chosen for a final water wash.

All of these individual editing decisions and subsequent paint actions could be recorded as individual paint action steps in a paint action sequence. The nice thing about recording your custom paint strategy in a PASeq is that you can save it as a preset and then use it at a later time when you want to reproduce your custom style using a new source image. Or you can auto-rotoscope a movie file using the PASeq to generate an output movie rendered with your custom technique.

In addition to developing sets of paint strategies for generating different art styles, you might also try building finishing or optimization strategies. For example, after i finish a painting or effected image there are usually a series of optimization steps i take to clean up and enhance the final image prior to saving it. Depending on the visual characteristics of the painted canvas i might use different finishing approaches. Again, the way to construct an optimization or finishing strategy is to figure out how to encapsulate a series of processing steps to get from point A to point B. For me this usually involves constructing approaches to optimizing contrast and edge rendition in the final image while possibly reducing noise or edge artifacts. I want to do this without enhancing noise or introducing noticeable artifacts into the final image. Sometimes i might add subtle lighting, texturing, or weathering effects.

I used to run my finishing strategies manually by making live edits in the various operation editors and then pressing action. But recently i've become a big fan of working with prebuilt finishing presets. Building a set of PASeqs that encapsulate your different finishing approaches and then accessing them as preset favorites can be a great time saver when working. It also provides an easy way to quickly try different potential finishing approaches on a canvas and undo any choices you are aren't happy with.