Studio Artist 4 lets you work off of a source image or start from scratch when building up a digital painting. For beginning users, working with a source image is the best way to get a feel for how Studio Artist works.

To get started, double click on the Studio Artist application icon. When the Studio Artist interface first launches it will be in the Paint Synthesizer operation mode. The Preset browser will display a series of factory paint presets.

The Source Area initially starts up with the Fixed Color option, displaying a color picker you can use to choose the current source color you want to paint with.

Using your mouse or pressure sensitive pen, try painting a few quick paint strokes in the canvas.

By clicking on different presets in the preset browser you can load them as the current preset.  Each preset has a different appearance and characteristic behavior when drawing.

Working with a Source Image

Studio Artist’s paint synthesizer is able to intelligently analyze a source image and then use that visual analysis to intelligently paint the source image in a variety of different styles. The visual characteristics of the loaded source image can also influence the appearance and behavior of paint presets designed for manual drawing as well. So you should try painting with a loaded source image to really appreciate the full potential that the factory paint presets have to offer.

Now lets get started by loading a source image. Use the File : Open Source menu command to open a source image.

If you are just getting started there are some source images that come with Studio Artist you can use for your first introductory painting sessions. When you run the Open Source menu command a standard file dialog will come up. Try going to the A Few Source Images folder that is in the same folder as the Studio Artist application. Choose the A Sunflower image to get started.

After you select your source image the Source Area will change to the Image tab and you will see a small representation of the source image you selected displayed in the source area.

Now try painting a few paint strokes. Note that the coloring of your paint strokes is now being chosen automatically from your source image. The color that is selected depends on where you are drawing in the canvas and is chosen to match the color of your source image in an equivalent spatial location. The source image will automatically map to the full canvas dimensions, even if they are different sizes.

Some paint presets will drag their initial coloring for the length of the entire paint stroke. Other presets may clone color, which means that the coloring of the paint stroke will adjust as you move the pen while drawing to best reflect the associated source coloring.

Automatic Painting

Studio Artist can intelligently paint a source image or a complete video file in a variety of different visual paint styles with no assistance from a user. This is called auto-painting, or auto-rotoscoping when working with movie files. Studio Artist uses the results of it’s intelligent visual analysis of the source image or source movie file to control drawing behind the scenes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you are just getting started with digital painting then Studio Artist’s intelligent assisted drawing will really open up new creative doors for you by enabling you to quickly be able to create artistic pieces without having to spend years learning to draw. Even if you are comfortable working with traditional manual painting you will find that automatic painting is an amazing source of creative inspiration, and a useful new tool for building artistic effects. And no matter what your background is, auto-painting is just plain fun.

Now, lets try automatic painting. Press the Action button.  Watch how Studio Artist automatically paints in the source image. To stop automatic painting, just press the spacebar.

Each paint preset has a different automatic drawing behavior in addition to the different physical appearance of the paint.  Try selecting different paint presets and then use the Action button to see how they automatically paint.

Paint Presets

Studio Artist presets are hierarchically organized by Collection And Category. There are 2 popup controls at the top of the factory preset browser that you can use to choose different collections of presets and the different categories associated with each collection.  Every time you load a new preset category the list of presets in the factory preset browser changes to display the individual presets included in that category.

Studio Artist ships with thousands of different factory presets. They encompass a vast range of different artistic effects. Rather than restrict your creative options to a few generic art presets we try to offer a very wide range of different aesthetic choices.

Some presets try to emulate traditional art media or techniques. Others create never seen before digital paint effects. All of the factory presets are completely editable, so you can modify and tweak them if desired to suit your own artistic needs.By editing your own presets, and building your own preset collections and categories you can totally customize Studio Artist to your own personal artistic vision.

Spend some time exploring the different factory paint presets that ship with Studio Artist 4. Some presets may have been designed primarily for auto painting or for manual painting, so it’s worth both manually painting a few paint strokes and then pressing the action button and watching the preset auto-paint to get a sense of what an individual paint preset can do.

If you do a lot of manual hand painting the CD_hand_Drawn_media collection was specifically designed for manual painting as opposed to action painting.

Working with the Source Area

The source area determines how coloring is applied to paint strokes. Depending on how you adjust the source area controls you can dramatically change the coloring behavior of your painting.

There are 4 different tab option available in the source area

• Image colors based on a loaded source image or movie
• Color allows for manual color selection using a color picker
• Palette allows for coloring based on a palette of colors
• Gradient allows for coloring based on a color gradient

Most of the main source area tab options also include a secondary coloring option you can adjust with a popup control. The Image source area tab offers the following secondary coloring options, which are all derived in some way from the source image coloring..

• Paint uses the source image directly for coloring
• Colorize maps the source image into the current source color hue
• Palettize maps the source image into the current source palette colors
• Fixed uses the current source color (but you can c click the source image to select a new source color directly from the source image)

Changing the Pen Mode

The paint synthesizer offers a large number of editable parameter options that can change the appearance and drawing behavior of any given paint preset. You can adjust all of the different editable paint synthesizer parameters in the Editor palette.

One very useful adjustable control is the pen mode. Any given paint preset will have radically different drawing behavior based on the pen mode setting. So learning how to adjust the pen mode is a great way to start to get familiar with editing the paint synthesizer to customize how paint presets look and behave.

The Pen Mode option is located in the Pen Mode control panel.

There’s a tutorial tip that discusses the different pen mode options and how to adjust them here.

Paint Synthesizer Macro Edits

There are a large number of different editable controls available in the paint synthesizer for adjusting the look, feel and automatic drawing capabilities of a paint preset. While this extreme amount of control ultimately is extremely useful for both customization and for providing the underlying capability to produce rich,lush organic paint effects, it can be somewhat intimidating to a beginning user.

Macro edits are a collection of single step editing commands that can be used to easy modify or edit paint presets. The paint synthesizer macro edits are available in the Help Browser as a series of active link commands.

To edit a paint preset with a specific macro edit command, just click the black arrow icon on the left side of the command. Pressing the arrow icon will run the active link command, which will automatically edit the current paint synthesizer settings to correspond to the editing change you requested.

The screen shot above shows a user running the Clone Source Color macro edit. Running this macro edit command will adjust the current paint preset so it clones color as opposed to dragging color.

Many macro edits adjust a series of different internal editable parameters to make the requested editing change. You could of course do this manual editing yourself by adjusting the series of editable controls in the paint synthesizer editor. The point of the macro edits is to provide an easy single click editing interface to common editing commands as an alternative to getting under the hood of the pant synthesizer.

For More Information

An introductory overview to the design philosophy behind the Paint Synthesizer is available here.

A short tip on how to change the brush size is available here.

A short tip on how to adjust the paint opacity is available here.

The Studio Artist User Guide pdf is the ultimate technical reference for all of the functionality available in Studio Artist. There’s a very detailed Paint Synthesizer chapter in the User Guide pdf that goes into great detail about all of the editable controls available in the paint synthesizer. The User Guide pdf is available in your main Studio Artist folder.

Studio Artist uses a special folder called the Brush folder as a container for storing individual image or movie files used in Studio Artist paint presets. This tip will discuss how to work with the Brush folder.

Many Studio Artist paint presets are defined computationally by the information stored in a paint preset file. However, some paint presets do reference specific image or movie files that are used to help build the paint preset. For example:

• An Image Source Brush uses an image file as a a brush source.
• A Movie Source Brush uses a movie file as a brush source.
• An Image Background Texture uses an image file to generate a texture.
• A Movie Background Texture uses a movie file to generate a texture.

These image or movie files are not stored in the paint preset file. A file path reference to the image or movie file is stored in the paint preset file. So when you open a paint preset that uses an image or movie file as a part of it’s specification Studio Artist needs to look on your hard disk for the referenced image or movie file and load it in order for the preset to paint properly.

The problem with file references is that the given image or movie file specified by the file path reference may have been moved or perhaps even deleted when you try and use the paint preset at a later date. The Brush folder provides a convenient way to store any image or movie files you use in your Studio Artist paint presets so that this does not happen.

Whenever Studio Artist is unable to find a particular image or movie file reference stored in a paint preset file during the import process, it then looks for that file name inside the Brush folder. The Brush folder needs to be located inside of the main Studio Artist folder next to the Studio Artist application and the other folders like the doc and Preset folders.

It’s highly recommended that if you build your own custom image or movie brush presets that you store their associated image or movie files in the Brush folder.  That way Studio Artist will always be able to locate the specific image or movie files used in those paint presets.  This will be true even if you move the location of your studio artist folder on your computer, or even if you move the folder to a different computer.

Terminology Confusion

Many paint programs refer to specific paint tools as ‘brushes’. So it’s easy to fall into using the term ‘brush’ to refer to some specific paint preset.

Internally, paint synthesizer classic paint tools consist of a virtual brush consisting of a source and a type.  The source is specified in the Brush Source control panel and the type is specified in the Brush Type control panel.

The Brush Modulation control panel parameter options provide additional control over the generation of the dynamic virtual brush. If you are working with an image brush for example, interactive modulators like pen pressure or tile could be used to dynamically modulate the size and orientation of an image brush.  An additional dynamic texture field could also be interactively mixed into the dynamic virtual brush.

Some brush types like the geodesic brush types ignore the brush source control panel settings since they are dynamic computational processes. Region fill as brush pen mode also overrides the brush source controls and generates a virtual source brush on the fly based on the region you specified with your manual or automatic painting. It’s also possible to construct a virtual brush by using path randomization or multi pen features to scatter a small brush nib around while drawing to simulate a larger virtual brush area.

Virtual dabs of paint are placed on the virtual brush and then applied to the draw canvas. Both how the virtual brush nib is generated, how the paint dab is generated, and how the brush nib loaded with the paint dab is applied to the canvas can all be dynamic processes in Studio Artist. By dynamic we mean they can be constantly varying and can also be interactively modulated by your mouse or pen gestures as you paint.

Many paint programs are internally based on an image brush for painting, end of story. So when they refer to a brush they are referring to the image used as a representation of a paint brush that is dragged around the canvas applying paint.

Studio Artist’s paint synthesizer has a much more elaborate and sophisticated painting engine as detailed above that is capable of creating much richer, more organic digital painting effects.  While you can certainly work with a simple image brush if you want to, many Studio Artist paint presets actually use generative computational brushes that are dynamically computed in real time as you paint.

The same is true for generating textures used for digital painting. You can generate a texture derived off of a single texture image in Studio Artist if you want to. But most presets use a combination of different computational procedural texture generators to create dynamic textures that are always changing, just like textures in the real world that are always varying and different rather than being a repeatable tiled pattern based on a single small image.

Movie brushes are a unique feature in Studio Artist that allow for collections of images to be used to build a paint tool. You can use movie brushes to build a dynamically modulatable virtual brush. You can also use movie brushes to build special effects like photo mosaic imagery.

Movie brushes can also be used in paint synthesizer time particles. The movie plays back as the painting time particle moves over time.

Movie brushes can also be used to build sophisticated hatching patterns for representing different tonal values in a sketch using the Movie Pixel Indexing feature in the Background Texture control panel.

The use of the term Brush in the first part of this tip is referring to the Studio Artist Brush folder.  Preset files you use for painting are not stored in the brush folder.  They are stored in the Preset : Paint folder. The brush folder is just used to store any image or movie files that are used internally within specific paint presets.

For More Information

A more detailed introduction into how the paint synthesizer works is available here.

More information on Studio Artist presets and how they are organized is available here.

The Studio Artist User Guide pdf is the definitive reference for all of the user adjustable parameters available in the paint synthesizer. The User Guide pdf is located in your main Studio Artist folder.

More information on how to build a movie brush is located here.

More information on working with movie pixel indexed background textures to build custom hatching patterns is detailed here.

The Paint Synthesizer can respond to your mouse or pen movements in different ways.  How the current paint preset responds to pen movement is a function of the paint synthesizer’s adjustable Pen Mode option.  Changing the pen mode is an easy way to modify the drawing behavior and appearance of any paint preset. This tip will discuss how to adjust the pen mode and the different kinds of drawing behavior you can access via the different pen modes.

Prior to version 4 the Pen Mode popup control was located above the left side of the draw canvas as shown below.

In version 4 the old pen mode popup control at the top level of the interface is gone.  In version 4 you adjust the Pen Mode in the paint synthesizer’s Pen Mode control panel. The different control panels associated with the paint synthesizer are accessed in version 4 via the Editor palette as shown below.

There are 13 different pen mode options to choose from. They all represent a unique way of drawing based on your manual pen movement. When we use the term pen in the discussion below we are referring to mouse movement or pen movement on a tablet. Pen lift also refers to a mouse up.

Many of them also have unique ways of auto drawing that mirror their manual painting behavior. Some pen modes like FreeStyle revert to Interactive Pen when they are auto-drawn because while their manual interactive drawing is unique the end result is a single paint path like interactive pen as far as auto-drawing is concerned.

Studio Artist is very unique when compared to other digital paint programs. The paint synthesizer is capable of intelligently automatically painting an image in a variety of different styles. Painting can be fully automatic, fully manual, or somewhere in between, artist and computer working together to paint and draw.

Some of the pen modes described below incorporate automatic drawing into paint presets that may still be designed for manual drawing. This is called intelligent assisted drawing. Studio Artist works as an intelligent assistant, automatically working in the background while still under interactive control by the artist as they manually direct drawing or painting.

The paint synthesizer’s automatic path generation features can be used to create a wide variety of different stylistic effects in a paint preset designed for manual painting.  This could be as simple as dynamically generating a cross hatching pattern to something more elaborate like simulating the behavior of liquid paint or ink droplets.

Interactive Pen

Interactive pen mode dynamically paints a single paint stroke as you move the pen. The paint appears in real time as you move the pen.

FreeStyle

FreeStyle pen mode dynamically draws a freestyle representation of the paint path as you move the pen.  The path can be repositioned or rotated while you are drawing by using the t or r hotkeys.  Once you lift the pen then the path representation vanishes and the actual paint stroke is drawn in with paint.

FreeStyle Autodraw

FreeStyle Autodraw pen mode dynamically draws a representation of the paint path as you move the pen.  The path can be repositioned or rotated while you are drawing by using the t or r hotkeys.  Once you lift the pen then the path representation vanishes and the path is used as a path start positioning generator to generate a series of autodrawn paint strokes that are spaced along the path you have drawn.

AutoDraw One Click

AutoDraw One Click pen mode draws a single automatic paint stroke where you click the pen.

AutoDraw Interactive

AutoDraw Interactive pen mode dynamically draws a series of automatic paint strokes as you move the pen. Auto drawing stops when you lift the pen.

The automatic painting is determined by the different adjustable parameters in the pain synthesizer associated with specifying automatic drawing. These include the Path Start, Path Shape, Path Angle, Path End, Path Randomization, and Path Application control panels.

Region Draw

Region Draw pen mode dynamically draws a representation of the regions paint path with a dynamically generated hatching pattern as you move the pen.  The paint path can be repositioned or rotated while you are drawing by using the t or r hotkeys. Once you lift the pen then the region path representation vanishes and the actual paint stroke that paints the specified region hatching pattern is drawn.

There are many kinds of different Region Fill Types that define hatching patterns for how the pen specified region is filled in. You can adjust this parameter in the Pen Mode control panel.

Bezier Curve

Bezier Curve  pen mode dynamically draws a representation of the bezier paint path as you move the pen.  The bezier path can be repositioned or rotated while you are drawing. Once you lift the pen then the bezier path representation vanishes and the actual paint stroke is drawn in with paint.

If you are using a tilt sensitive pen and tablet then the bezier curve automatically adjusts as you tilt and reorient the pen. Otherwise you can use the option hot key to adjust the shape of the curve and the pen movement to reposition the curve end point. Pressing the command hot key adds a new segment to the bezier curve you are drawing.

Particle Paint

Particle Paint pen mode dynamically draws with a stream of paint particles while you move the pen. The behavior of the dynamic painting particles can dramatically change depending on the different adjustable settings in the Particle Pen control panel.

Interactive MultiPen

Interactive MultiPen mode dynamically paints a series of multiple paint stroke as you move the pen. This pen mode is designed to simulate a brush with multiple bristles.  Each bristle paints with it’s own dynamic paint path. There are a wide variety of different adjustable controls to change the appearance and behavior of multipen paint presets in the MultiPen Mode control panel.

AutoDraw MultiPen

Works like Interactive AutoDraw pen mode, except that it autodraws with a multipen brush rather than an interactive pen brush.

RegionDraw MultiPen

Works like Region Draw pen mode except that the region is filled with a mutipen brush rather than an interactive pen brush.

Region Fill as Brush

Region Fill as Brush pen mode dynamically draws a representation of the paint path as you move the pen.  The path can be repositioned or rotated while you are drawing.  Once you lift the pen then the path representation vanishes and the path is used as the outline of a solid region. The solid region is filled in like it is a single paint nib. This pen mode overrides the normal source brush controls since the brush shape is being defined dynamically by the path you manually draw in.

The Region Fill as Brush control panel has a number of different adjustable parameters that determine how a region is generated and filled.

Auto Region Fill as Brush

Auto Fill as Brush pen mode dynamically auto paints a path that is then used as the outline for a slid painted region. The solid region is filled in like it is a single paint nib. This pen mode overrides the normal source brush controls since the brush shape is being defined dynamically by the path that was autodrawn by the paint synthesizer.

The Region Fill as Brush control panel has a number of different adjustable parameters that determine how a region is generated and filled.

For More Information

The Studio Artist User Guide pdf is the complete technical reference for information on editing all of the over 480 different user adjustable parameter options in the paint synthesizer. You can find the User Guide pdf in your Studio Artist 4 folder.

For an introduction to the paint synthesizer and how it works check out this tip.

For more information on Studio Artist’s hot key commands and hot key modifies check out this tip.

Paint Synthesizer Overview

There are a number of different paint synthesizer control panels with associated user editable parameter options that work together to determine where individual paint strokes are positioned on the canvas.

• Path Start control panel – determines where individual paint strokes start to draw on the canvas.

• Path Shape and Path Angle control panels – determine how the individual paint strokes are drawn.

• Path End control panel – specifies additional conditions that can stop a paint stroke from drawing if one of those conditions is met.

Working with the Path Start and the Path End control panels is really the key to focusing automatic paint strokes to draw on certain restricted areas of the canvas.

Path Start Control Panel

The Path Start control panel determines where individual paint strokes begin drawing on the canvas. The path start Generator determines the initial start location sampling. You can think of the Generator as generating a series of spatial coordinates in the draw canvas that are physical locations where automatic paint strokes could start drawing.

There are additional path start controls that can be used to inhibit certain start locations output by the Generator from actually being used for drawing. Similarly some of the path start control options may define conditions that make certain spatial locations on the canvas more likely to be used as start locations for paint strokes. So the path start process works by generating a spatial position in the canvas and then evaluating whether to use that location for drawing or to skip it and move on to evaluating the next potential location for drawing.

The Max Stroke setting determines how many times the Generator tries to position a path start location for drawing. If no path start or path end inhibitors are turned on then that will be the number of paint strokes drawn when you press the action button. But if path start inhibitors are turned on, then the generator will try max stroke number of times to start a path but not all of those locations may actually end up being used for drawing.

The 2 Probability options weight certain generator start locations as being more likely to be kept or to be passed over. The action probability decision could be thought of as like a coin toss, it’s a random decision based on the specified probability function. The Texture Prob Weighting is useful for directing paths to start at locations associated with source edge detail, so try this option if you want your paint strokes to focus on drawing in the source edge areas of the canvas.

The Inhibitor specifies specific conditions that must be met at a path start location for painting to happen there or not. The example above has the Inhibitor set to White Only, which means that painting will only start in pure white areas of the canvas. By pure white we mean (255,255,255) RGB coloring. So if you started by erasing your canvas to white and then painted on top of the white canvas, you could use this inhibitor setting for subsequent paint passes to force paint strokes to only start in the remaining white areas of the painted canvas.

The Texture and Lum (luminance) Range controls can be used to associate path start locations with specific texture energies or luminance ranges. High texture energy would be associated with edge locations in the source image. A low luminance range (near 0) would be associated with black or dark areas of the image. A high luminance range (near 255) would be associated with white or light areas of the image.

Path Shape and Path Angle Control Panels

The Path Shape and Path Angle control panels determine how an individual paint stroke is drawn.  Paint strokes are dynamically generated on the fly during painting. The path shape generator and it’s associated editable controls work in conjunction with the path angle generator to dynamically control the drawing of individual paint strokes.

The path shape controls work together to determine the shape of the paint path. The path angle controls work to determine the angular direction of the paint path as it’s being drawn. The path angle control settings can have a big effects on the final physical appearance of the generated paint path for a given path shape control setup.

The path shape controls determine a maximum paint stroke length.  The generated paint strokes will be drawn to this specified maximum stroke length unless path end options are turned on. Depending on which path end control options are turn on, a generated path may stop drawing early if the associated activated path end conditions are met during the dynamic path drawing process.

Path End Control Panel

The Path End control panel is used to define conditions that if met will stop a paint strokes from drawing. There are a large number of different path end options. Some correspond to edge locations in the image, others correspond to certain characteristics of the source image like luminance or color ranges, path angle divergence, etc.

For example, if the Texture Range option is turned on, then a path will stop painting if it runs into a textured area with a certain energy range.  The settings shown above with a Texture Range Min of 40 and a Texture Range Max of 255 would correspond to edge locations in the source image.  So turning on the Texture Range control with these settings means that a path will stop drawing if it runs into an area of the canvas associated with a source image edge.

The Local Color Range option is useful for tightening up a painting.  When turned on it prevents a paint path from drawing if the color of the paint no longer represents the coloring of the source image in the location the path is currently drawing in. The Local Color Range Value determines how different the paint color can be from the associated source image coloring before the path stops drawing.

Blanking Buffer

The paint synthesizer includes a hidden Blanking buffer.  You can think of the blanking buffer as a 1 bit per pixel frame buffer than can be used to track paint coverage when drawing a set of paint strokes. There are controls located in the path start and path end control panels associated with blanking.

The path start Blanking controls shown above determine how the blanking buffer is filled (or not) when painting. The Blanking option determines what is drawn into the blanking buffer as painting takes place. The Brush option fills with the brush nib, the path option fills with the single pixel paint path. This second option is useful if you want to inhibit painting when it runs into a previously drawn paint stroke but to have the end of the path overpaint  the previous paint stroke a little.

If Reset Blanking is turned on then the blanking buffer is erased at the beginning of each auto paint step. If the blanking is not reset then the buffer will contain information about paint strokes drawn in previous auto-paint passes.

The path end control panel has a blanking option (shown above).  When this option is turned on then a dynamic paint stroke will stop drawing when it runs into a spatial location in the blanking buffer that is turned on. When used with the path start blanking options described above this would typically be where you had previously drawn a paint stroke.

Setting up the blanking buffer to reset for each auto paint step, fill with the brush nib or paint path, and to stop drawing when a paint stroke reaches a blanked out location is a common paint synthesizer editing convention used in many paint presets. It’s a way to speed up overpainting a canvas, since paint strokes will stop drawing when they reach a previously painted area rather than continue painting.

Like everything in Studio Artist, the blanking buffer is a tool that can be modified to use as you see fit. Typically it is used to track paint coverage as discussed above, but you could use it as a custom stencil buffer, user defined mask, or for other custom applications.

For More Information

For a general overview of the paint synthesizer check out this tip .

For an Introduction to the paint synthesizer check out this tip .

Detailed explanations of all of the adjustable control options for all of the control panels in the paint synthesizer are included in the Studio Artist User Guide pdf. The User Guide pdf is included in your main Studio Artist folder. You can read it with a pdf reader like Acrobat Reader or Apple’s Preview application.

The paint synthesizer’s editable parameters are adjusted in the Editor palette. The Editor palette is a generic editor that is context sensitive to Studio Artist’s main operation modes. When you are in Paint Synthesizer Classic Operation mode you can manually or automatically paint using the paint synthesizer and it’s associated Editor adjustable parameters.

The adjustable popup at the top of the Editor lets you choose between the different control panels available for any given operation mode. When in paint synthesizer classic operation mode this control panel popup displays the different paint synthesizer control panels.

To adjust the paint opacity you will want to select the Paint Fill Apply control panel.

There are 2 different adjustable parameters you can use to adjust the paint opacity. The Blend % control is the one you will typically use. This adjusts the blend of paint applied to the canvas. By decreasing the Blend % parameter you are reducing the amount of paint applied to the canvas, so the paint will appear lighter.

The Blend Mod parameter lets you apply a modulator to the Blend % setting. The modulator will modulate the blend of the application of paint onto the canvas from 0 to the specified Blend % setting. A common blend modulator is Path Pressure. Selecting this Path Pressure modulator option for the Blend Mod editable parameter will let you interactively modulate the paint blend based on your pen pressure when using a pen and tablet.

There are a large number of different Blend Mod options. You can edit your paint presets to interactively modulate the blend based on pen pressure, tilt, tilt orientation, path length, and many other options.

There’s also a Transparency % parameter available on the Paint Fill Apply control panel. This control lets you add additional true transparency to your paint independent of the blend setting.

Studio Artist’s painting engine tries to simulate the effect of applying nibs of paint on a brush to a canvas. The Blend control is working at that level of the physical paint on canvas simulation. So this is typically the control you will want to adjust to lighten up on the amount of paint being applied to the canvas. And this is the reason why the interactive modulators like pen pressure work with modulating the Blend.

The Transparency control provides a second level of true transparency adjustment. Adjusting this control will give you a transparency adjustment for your paint that is separate from the recursive mixing occurring at in the physical simulation of paint-canvas interaction going on in the paint synthesizer.  However,this control does not take the recursive paint mixing into account like the blend control does, so adjusting the transparency is not going to be as natural an effect as adjusting the blend for wet paint presets. This is the reason why you modulate the blend setting with pen pressure if you want to build a pressure sensitive paint preset.

The Replace Composite option assumes a 100% Blend, so the Blend % and Blend Mod controls vanish from the Paint Fill Apply control panel if you have the Composite control set to Replace.  If you change the Composite setting to Blend then the Blend controls will reappear. Blend % is available for all of the Composite settings except for Replace.

The Composite control lets you choose the particular compositing algorithm used to combine paint onto the canvas. Compositing algorithms are sometimes called transfer modes in other graphics programs. A compositing algorithm takes 2 images as input and combines them together in some specified way. Blend compositing linearly mixes the 2 images (paint and canvas being the 2 images in this case). Min compositing is a nonlinear kind of compositing that outputs the darkest pixels from the 2 input images. It’s useful to simulate some watercolor paint effects where the application of additional paint onto a canvas only darkens what is already marked on the canvas.

The Studio Artist paint synthesizer contains an internal brush capture buffer that can be used to grab and store a piece of the current draw canvas.  The brush capture buffer is always the size of the current brush source buffer.  This size is specified in the Brush Source control panel. You can always use the b hot key while mousing down in the draw canvas to interactively resize the brush source buffer on the fly.

To grab a brush load capture, just hold down the a hot key and mouse down in the draw canvas at the local area where you want the capture to take place.  Where the cursor is pointing when you mouse down with the a key pressed will be the center of the brush load capture image. The size of the brush load capture image will be the size of the source brush.

The screen snapshot below shows the cursor being positioned to capture a small area in the draw canvas between 2 existing paint strokes. I was holding down the a key when i clicked in this canvas area.

After being captured, the current brush load buffer contents will then be displayed at the bottom of the paint synthesizer Editor as show in the screen snapshot below.

This brush load capture preview only displays if you are working with a paint preset that is configured to use the  brushload capture buffer.  We’ll discuss how to turn on this particular paint synthesizer feature next.

In order to use the brush load capture buffer for painting you need to be painting with the output of the Paint Brush Load control panel. The screen snap below shows the paint Fill Setup control panel configured to fill from the Paint Brush Load.

Note that the Fill From popup is set to use the output of the Paint Brush Load control panel. The next screensnap below shows the Paint Brush Load control panel configured to work with the brush load capture buffer. Note that the Source for the paint brush load module is set to BrushLoad Capture.  Turning on this particular source paint brush load source setting is what activates the brush load capture preview display at the bottom of the paint synthesizer editor discussed above.

The brush load settings shown above will paint with a paint nib generated from the contents of the brush load capture buffer with no additional processing.  The screensnap below shows a simple example of painting with the brush load capture buffer we captured earlier in this tutorial. Note that the painting is taking place with a simple image brush derived off of the brush load capture buffer.  If you used the a hotkey to select a different area of the canvas then the painting would use that new capture buffer as the image brush for additional painting.

This is the simplest example of using a brush load capture buffer.  You can build much more sophisticated paint presets that work with brush load capture buffers if you wish to.  For example, you could turn on a Brush Load control panel algorithm.  This would take the brush load capture buffer and use it as a source for additional processing specified by the image processing algorithm you choose. The screen snap below shows one simple example that will colorize the brush load capture buffer contents on the fly to try to represent a local area of the source image.

An example of some output derived from this simple editing change is shown below.

There’s a zip compressed folder on the Studio Artist User Forum with the 2 brush load capture paint presets we worked with above.  You can download those presets here.

Fixed Offset Source Cloning

If your goal is to paint with a fixed area of the source image as a brush load capture paint nib you can use the Paint Source Offset control panel in the paint synthesizer to do this directly. As opposed to dragging the source to the canvas and then capturing a brushload using the features described above.

In the Paint Source Offset control panel is a parameter called tracking.  Normally you would leave this set to  Start Point for normal painting.  But if you switch it to Fixed, hold down the t key, and then mouse down on an area in the source image, then the brush tracking will stick to the location you clicked (this is what Fixed tracking means).  So now if you have a normal source clone brush it will paint with the fixed source nib image you clicked on.

This tip is going to discuss some Studio Artist features useful for building up tone in an image. Tone or mass can be thought of as representing the visual weight of a sketch or artistic rendition and relates to building some kind of representation of the original source luminance in the artistic rendition of that source image.  In this tip we’ll be looking at paint synthesizer and image operation features that are useful for this topic.

Visual perception of imagery can be thought of in terms of different visual sensory modalities. People’s perception of visual imagery can be broken down into raw visual components like line or edge, tone or mass, color, movement, etc. We perceive these component aspects of visual imagery when we examine an image or painting.  And artistic representational techniques take advantage of this by how they work to represent (or ignore) these visual sensory components.

Tone or mass in a sketch works to represent the low spatial frequency luminance of the original source image being recreated in a sketch. A sketch may try to accurately reproduce the original luminance values, or it may radically distort the original tone values to accent certain image features while ignoring or suppressing others. Tone or mass in a sketch can also work to accent positive and negative space in the original source image. Or it may be distorted to better reproduce or enhance certain edge structure or salient visual features in the original source image while acting to simplify other non-essential source image features.

Many Studio Artist paint presets work by adding visual information to the working canvas. A simplistic view of this process is piling on paint strokes until some stopping point is reached. If the artistic goal is simply to build up an artistic representation by working with colored paint strokes that clone the original source image and completely fill the canvas then a user can ignore more advanced strategies for building tone and just let the paint synthesizer pile on paint strokes until a successful stopping point is reached.

But assume you are building a black and white sketch.  If one blindly piles on black paint strokes eventually the entire canvas will be filled with solid black. So for this kind of artistic image a more intelligent paint strategy must be programmed within the paint synthesizer so that the paint preset understands tone and tries to reproduce it within the black and white sketch.

There are various visual intelligence features in the paint synthesizer that can be turned on and will then work as an aid in reproducing tone in a sketch. This includes features in the path start, path end, and path application control panels. Some of these features are probabilistic in nature. Others are more intelligent and visually compare the original source mage with the existing working canvas to determine if adding a new paint stroke in a particular area of the canvas will lead to better or worse tone reproduction. The path start controls work to intelligently position paint paths to best reproduce source tone. The path end and path application controls work to stop drawing a particular paint path if it’s going to lead to bad source tone reproduction in a rendition.

Different attributes of a paint preset can also be modulated based on the original source luminance as an aid in reproducing tone or mass in a sketch. For example, the brush size can be modulated based on the source luminance so that larger brush sizes are used to reproduce dark tones while smaller brush sizes are used to reproduce lighter source tones. A similar kind of modulation can be used for the path length of paint strokes. These kinds of paint synthesizer programing can lead to paint presets that intelligently try to adjust how they draw to reproduce tone in an artistic rendition.

Path Start Control Panel

Setting the Inv Gray Prob Weight option for the Probability parameter will lead to paths starting more frequently on darker areas of the image and less frequently in lighter areas of the image.

The Lum Range parameters can also be used to restrict path start locations to a specific range of source luminance values.

Path End Control Panel

The Visual Error parameter provides a number of intelligent options that can be used to build tone rendition in a paint preset. White and black canvas lum error assume you will be starting with a white or black canvas. The last 2 options make no assumptions about the initial canvas state.  All of these options will end a path from drawing if they feel that continuing drawing would lead to incorrect tone reproduction.

There are also path end luminance range  options like those discussed for path start. The difference is that they end a path if the path leaves the retricted luminance range.

Path Application

The Probability parameter in the Path Application control panel includes a number of different options that can be used to intelligently build tone. These include WhiteCanvasProbErr, WhiteCanvasErr, BlackCanvasProbErr, BlackCanvasErr, Paint Lum Err, and Source Image Lum Err. This probability control acts to drop out or restrict individual paint nibs from drawing based on it’s specific setting while an overall path is being painted.

The tone mapped sketch image above was generated by auto-drawing with the Default : Auto Sketch : Visual Model2 paint preset. This preset uses a WhiteCanvasErr option for the Probability parameter in the Path Application control panel. It also uses a WhiteCanvasLumErr option for the Visual Error parameter in the Path End control panel.

Preprocessing the Source Image

An alternative approach to building tone with the paint synthesizer is to preprocess the source image and then paint the modified source. The processing can act to accent certain tonal areas while suppressing others.

The example above shows a modified source image that was processed with the Threshold ip op using the Soft LA Threshold algorithm. Generating a paint sketch off of this modified source image would enhance hatching in the dark areas of the image while suppress hatching in the lighter areas of the image. So the final sketch tone map will not accurately reflect the actual source luminance values but will reflect the distorted modified source tone map.

Movie Pixel Index Background Textures

The background texture control panel of the paint synthesizer includes a very useful tool for building hatching patterns that are used to reproduce tone in a sketch. A movie background texture generates the background texture based on individual frames in a movie file. How the individual movie frames are indexed or accessed during drawing can be modulated based on various visual attributes.  These include the source image rgb or luminance values, which would mean that the movie frame that best reproduces a particular area of the source image would be used when drawing in that associated area of the canvas.

The normal movie background texture re-indexes the movie frame every time the paint brush moves through the complete local area associated with the background texture. So if the movie background texture was 64 by 64 pixels then after the paint brush moved 64 pixels the movie frame used for the background texture would be re-indexed.

Movie pixel index background textures re-index the movie frame for each pixel when drawing.  This has the potential to run slower, especially if the movie is drawing from disk rather than from a memory preload.  But the movie frame is adjusted for each pixel to accurately track whatever frame index modulation has been chosen.

So, you can use movie pixel index background textures as a sophisticated technique to build customizable hatching patterns that accurately reproduce source luminance or tone for each pixel.  To do this, you build a stack of hatching patterns that reproduce tone for different luminance levels. The patterns should additively build to reproduce tone. Source luminance is then used to modulation the movie pixel indexing when drawing takes place.

Two examples of this approach to building intelligent hatching for tone reproduction in a sketch is shown above and below. This image was generated with the Circle Hatcher paint synthesizer preset which is located in the Default : General category.

For more information on working with movie pixel indexed background textures check out this tutorial.

Sketch Mass Ip Op

The Sketch Mass ip op is a new image operation effect in Studio Artist 4. This effect can be configured to create  a wide variety of different tone or mass sketch effects. There’s another Sketch Edge ip op that focuses of generating edge and feature sketches. Using the 2 effects together in a paint action sequence (PASeq) gives you the power to create an infinite variety of different sketch effects.

Both Sketch image operations can generate raster sketch images or they can generate a set of bezier paths to define a sketch. The generated bezier paths can then be used to drive the paint synthesizer leading to an even greater range of potential sketch styles.

The tone sketch examples at the beginning of this section and at the very top of this tip were created using the Sketch Mass ip op.

The Sketch Mass ip op is described in greater detail in this tip.

Generating bezier paths is described in greater detail in the tip.

There are a wide variety of different tools available in Studio Artist for converting raster images into bezier path renditions of the image. These include techniques to generate bezier path edge sketches (like above), as well as bezier mass sketches based on cross hatching, and complete cartoon style vector renditions of of color imagery. This tip will provide an overview of different approach to generating bezier renditions of raster images.

The example above is a bezier path edge rendition made from the raster image called ‘model’ in the ‘a few source images’ folder provided with Studio Artist. The bezier paths were generated from the source image by running the Path : Generate Paths : from Source Edges menu command.

The generated paths are stored in the current layer’s bezier path frame after they are generated. The bezier path frame is a hidden buffer associated with each layer that can store and display a set of bezier paths. You can view the current layer’s bezier path frame by switching to bezier operation mode. Once in bezier operation mode you can also manually edit the individual bezier paths or hand draw new ones.

Each layer has it’s own bezier path frame. Any path menu operations that generate or modify bezier paths are doing so to the current layer’s bezier path frame. Keep in mind that if you are generating new bezier paths you probably want to initially erase the existing contents of the current layer’s bezier path frame prior to generating new bezier paths. You can either use the erase path layer command menu to do this, or shift clicking the erase button in the main operation toolbar will also do this when it resets the canvas to a default coloring.

Generate Paths

There are a large number of different Generate Paths menu options in addition to the one used above. Adjacent edges generate a bezier path on each side of an edge. Skeletons are bezier paths generated at the mid points between 2  edges, and are an attempt to represent the center spines of different image regions bounded by edges.

The NonWhite options are useful to convert a raster edge image into a set of associated bezier paths. For example, you might use some image operation or MSG preset to generate a black and white raster image edge rendition where the edges are black an the background is white. The NonWhite generate path options can then be used to convert than raster canvas image (or selection) into a set of associated bezier paths.

The Generate Paths : from Ip Op menu option is a new version 4 feature that can generate bezier paths from associated image operations.  not all image operations can generate bezier paths. If a specific image operation can generate bezier paths then this from Ip Op menu will be active when that image operation is active in the image operation editor. Image operations that support generating bezier paths include the Sketch Edge, Sketch Mass, and Color Edge.

Path Layer Commands

The Path : Path Layer Commands menus shown below provide a number of different tools that can be used to modify or enhance generated bezier edge renditions of sketches.

For example, running Size Prune , Connect if Close, and Simplify Lite menu commands on the initial bezier sketch of the model shown at the top of this tip results in the following set of bezier paths. Note how these modified bezier paths have a more stylized hand drawn appearance than the original set of bezier paths derived from the raster source image edges.

Sketch Image Operations

The Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass image operations are new to version 4 and can provide for a wide range of different sketch effects derived off of raster source images. While the normal operation of the 2 Sketch ip ops generate raster sketch images, as discussed above you can use the Path : Generate Paths : from Ip Op menu to generate a bezier path rendition of the associated Sketch effect.

The image below is a screen shot of a set of bezier paths generated using the Sketch Mass ip op and the Path : Generate Paths : from Ip Op menu command.

Once you have a set of bezier paths generated that represent a raster image, you can then paint in those paths using the paint synthesizer. This additional step allows for an infinite variety of different artistic styles to be created off of a given set of bezier paths. The bezier path images above are actual screen snaps of the canvas taken displaying the bezier paths when in Bezier operation mode. But you could generate identical raster canvas images by using a simple 1 pixel black line paint synthesizer preset.

For example, the image below shows a set of bezier paths generated using the Sketch Edge ip op displayed on top of a watercolor paint synthesizer rendition of those bezier paths.  A watercolor paint preset was initially selected and then used to paint the bezier paths by running the Path : Paint Paths : Full Layer menu command. This is an example of painting in a set of vector bezier paths with a raster paint effect into a raster canvas for raster image output.

Vector Output

The Studio Artist 4 paint synthesizer allows for vector paint effects. So you could take the initial bezier paths defining a sketch and then render them using vector paint strokes in the paint synthesizer. Or you could render them by drawing them in with raster paint effects. Vector paint strokes allows for tight anti-aliased renditions as well as resolution independent output. Raster paint strokes allows for organize paint textures, wet paint effects, smear and smudge effects, etc.

For example, the sketch image above is a vector eps sketch rendition of a raster source image of George Carlin. It was generated by first running the Path : Generate Paths:  from Source Images menu.  This generated a bezier edge sketch from the raster source image. That set of bezier paths was then painted in with the paint synthesizer by running the Path: Paint Paths : Full Layer menu command shown below.  This menu command paints in the set of bezier paths in the current layer’s bezier path frame using the current paint synthesizer settings.

For this particular example, i used a paint synthesizer preset that is capable of vector drawing and eps output of the associated vectors. Each bezier path is actually rendered as a bezier region by the paint synthesizer preset used for drawing the bezier paths, where the shape of the generated region defines a simulation of a paint or ink stroke that varies in width over the course of the path drawing. Because the final output was a vector eps file, the sketch is resolution independent and could be printed at extremely high resolutions or large print sizes if desired without losing any detail in the print.

When outputting vector artwork in Studio Artist 4 you can choose between eps, pdf, and svg vector formats. Note that in the example above the initial bezier paths have actually been converted into bezier shapes or regions that the user interprets as thick paint strokes in the final artistic rendition.

Additional Information

There are some additional tips that discuss generating and working with bezier paths and the various vector output formats.

For more information on generating EPS vector files, check out this tip.

For more information on generating and outputting SVG vector files, check out this tip.

For more information on the new Sketch image operation effects, checkout this tip.

For more information on things you can do with bezier paths in Studio Artist check out this tip.

To learn more about how to generate paint presets that do vector drawing check out this tip.

The Vectorizer is a completely different way to generate bezier region renditions of raster source images that was not discussed in this tip. For more information on the Vectorizer check out this tip.

MSG presets can be used to customize and extend the capabilities of the paint synthesizer in many different ways. MSG stands for modular synthesized graphics and is Studio Artist’s modular image processing architecture. This tip will discuss the various ways you can use MSG presets to customize and enhance the paint synthesizer.

The example image above was generated by painting with a dynamic MSG source brush derived from a MSG chaotic attractor preset. By painting with a dynamic chaotic attractor as a paint brush you can create rich organic paint textures and splattering effects where the individual brush shapes are always changing and unique as a painting is generated.

MSG Options in the Paint Synthesizer

Building a MSG source brush is just one of the different options you can take when working with MSG presets in the paint synthesizer. You can also use MSG to build MSG path start generators, MSG path shapes, and MSG brush load types.

Path start, path shape, brush load, and source brush are all different features of the Studio Artist paint synthesizer classic operation mode. Path start generators refer to how the initial starting points for automatically generated paint paths are chosen. Path shape refers to how the shape of an automatically generated paint path is created. Brush load refers to how a dynamic dab of paint is created and loaded onto the digital brush prior to applying the brush to the working canvas. Source brush refers to the initial shape of the digital brush that will be applying paint dabs to the canvas.

So MSG can be used to customize where paint paths are positioned in the canvas, what the individual paint paths look like, what individual dabs of paint that will be applied to the canvas in a paint stroke look like, and what the paint brush that applies the dabs of paint looks like. All of these MSG derived attributes of a painting can be interactively or automatically modulated over time while constructing a painting or an animated movie.

Because MSG is a modular image processing system with over 500 different  image processing modules that can be combined together to build custom MSG presets, there’s really an infinite variety of different MSG based texture generators or image processing effects you can create. And all of this processing power can be used to customize and extend the capabilities of the paint synthesizer.

Temporal generators (TG) can be used to modulate different editable parameters in a MSG preset. You can work with TG based modulation in different ways when building a MSG derived paint synthesizer preset. The TG modulation could be occurring while a path is being drawn (path modulation), only at the beginning of each newly created path (stroke count modulation), or for each new frame when constructing an animation (frame modulation). TG modulators can be derived from time based oscillators as well as interactive modulators like pen pressure or position.

All of the different MSG paint synthesizer options include individual parameters to determine how TG modulation is used when drawing.

Typically you would use only one of the 4 different MSG paint synthesizer options at a time. You could conceivably use more than 1.  You can currently only work with one MSG preset in the paint synthesizer, so if you have more than one MSG option turned on they will all be working off of the same MSG preset.

Encapsulating MSG within a Paint Preset

Whatever the current state of the MSG operation mode settings are, that is what will be used for any MSG derived processing in the paint synthesizer.  This means you could setup a MSG based paint preset and then use the preset browser to load in different MSG presets to use for the MSG derived painting. Whatever was the current MSG preset at any given time is what would be running when painting with the MSG paint synthesizer settings in paint synthesizer classic operation mode.

You can export a paint preset that encapsulates a specific MSG preset within the paint preset file. If you do this, then when you import that paint preset it will overwrite the current MSG operation mode settings as well as the current paint synthesizer settings. In general this is probably the way you want to build your MSG based paint synthesizer presets. If you don’t, then the next time you import your paint preset it will just use whatever the current MSG operation mode settings are when you try to draw with it.

To encapsulate a MSG preset within a paint preset, you want to make sure the MSG Save in Preset option in the Miscellaneous control panel in the paint synthesizer is turned on prior to exporting the paint preset. Turning this option on ensures that the next time you use a MSG based paint preset it will work the way you expect it to, both when importing the preset from disk or when playing back the preset in a Paint Action Sequence (PASeq).

For More Information

There are a number of articles that have been posted on the Studio Artist News blog that discuss working with MSG presets in the paint synthesizer.

Here’s an article that discusses working with MSG path start generators.

Here’s an article that discusses working with MSG derived time particles.

Here’s an article that discusses painting with dynamic MSG source brushes.

Here’s an article that discusses painting with MSG derived chaotic attractors.

Here’s an additional tip on this blog that discusses working with MSG live source brushes.

You can also search this blog for MSG related articles to learn more about working with and building custom MSG presets. If you need to learn more about how the paint synthesizer works, there are a number of different articles here on the tips site that detail how it works and how to program it.

Path Start Regionization

The key to recreating Art Mapper style effects in Studio Artist v4 is to utilize the paint synthesizer’s path start regionization features. All of the regionization path start generators intelligently analyze the source image and break it up into component regions. Each of these regions is then processed by the paint synthesizer one at a time.

At the time this tip was written the regionization path start generators include the following options:

• Watershed Regionize
• Adaptive Block Regionize
• Cellular Regionize
• Cell Partition Regionize
• Color Simplify Regionize
• Selection as Regions (all, full on only, all except full on)
• Flat Region Canvas as Regions

The first 4 regionization options include normal and DM options. The DM options include an additional intelligent split of each generated region, and will better represent the features of the source image by preserving edge transitions.

There are several different approaches to programing the paint synthesizer when working with path start regionization.  The individual regions could for example be painted in with normal paint strokes. The Path Start Regionize and Path Start Regionize use RegionDraw Pen Gen Path Type options in the Path Shape control panel can be used with path start regionize generators to create a wide variety of different fill paths for painting in the generated regions.

Selection Derived Regionization

There are a number of different path start regionization options derived from the current selection. The selection as regions – all levels generator option is especially useful for expanding the range of potential region generation effects. Both the Vectorizer and Image Operation effects can be configured to output to the current selection as opposed to the raster draw canvas. So you could use the vectorizer to transform a source image into regions and route the vectorizer output to the current selection. You could then run the selection as regions – all levels path start generator and the paint synthesizer will act as if the vectorizer derived the path start regions it will be filling in.

Working with the selection buffer as an intermediate is the way to infinitely expand the options for generating different kinds of path start regionization shapes. You can record the component vectorizer and paint synthesizer steps in a PASeq to generate a single preset that generates the overall regionization effect. Whatever processing effect you use in this way to drive path start regionization via the selection buffer, you want to make sure the effect generates a series of flat colored regions as it’s output.

Generating the Region Brush Fill Nib

To duplicate the Art Mapper we want to either map images and or MSG preset processing to each generated region. So we really want to configure the paint synthesizer to preform image processing effects on each generated region area. The best way to do this is to use Region Fill as Brush pen mode.

Normal region fill as brush pen mode auto drawing takes the path generated by the paint synthesizer and converts it into a region that is then used as a substitute for the normal paint synthesizer source brush for a paint fill. However, since the path start regionization generators are directly generating raster image regions we can use them directly to create the region fill as brush paint nibs. The way to do this is to use the new v4 Selection Override options for the Generator parameter in the Region as Brush Mode control panel.

Keep in mind that you need to have the Path Type option in the Path Shape control panel set to Path Start Regionize if you want the Selection Override Generator setting to pass through the individual path start regionize region shapes directly to the region fill as brush fill operation. Otherwise it will just use the existing selection buffer for all of the fills.

Photo Mosaic Effects

MSG Evolver generated photo mosaic effects by working with an image database generated from a folder of images (or movies). Each image database (call a Poster Index in Evolver terminology), consisted of 3 different files (poster, index FV or feature vector).

Studio Artist does not currently work with Evolver image database files. It uses movie files as a way to access collections of images. You can load a movie file as a movie source brush or a movie background texture. Once a movie brush is loaded into the paint synthesizer, it is analyzed and feature vectors are available internally for the paint synthesizer to make intelligent decisions about choosing specific image frames in the movie that best represent spatial areas in a source image when constructing a photo mosaic.

The region fill as brush pen mode works to override the normal source brush settings, replacing the source brush with the generated region that will be used for a fill instead of the normal brush. So if you want to use a movie source brush in region fill as brush pen mode you need to configure the paint synthesizer a certain way. You want the region fill as brush generate region to be used as the alpha channel for the temporarily generated source brush while still using the loaded movie source brush for the RGB channels of the generated brush nib. The way to do this is to use the Alpha Only Brush Option setting in the Region Fill as Brush control panel.

And to use the Source Alpha Brush Brush Type option in the Brush Type control panel.

Colorization

The Art Mapper also offered a number of different colorization options for the sub images that make up a photo mosaic effect. Colorization processing can be useful to help generate a photo mosaic that better represents the source image. The way to build colorization processing into a photo mosaic paint preset in Studio Artist is to use the image processing brush load features of the paint synthesizer.

There’s a large number of different image processing brush load Algorithm settings that can be used for colorization, including all of the Paint Color Mean Shift and Paint Color Hue algorithms.

MSG Art Mapper Effects

MSG Evolver’s ArtMapper offered the ability to construct composite art images derived from multiple applications of MSG presets in spatially local subareas of a large art canvas. You can think of this as being like a photo mosaic, except that a MSG derived procedural image is generated for each sub area of the larger automatically constructed art canvas. The MSG generated images could be totally procedural, or source processing effects that processed images in the image database with an MSG effect for each sub image of the larger art canvas.

The way to duplicate this MSG derived art mapped image in Studio Artist 4 is to use the MSG Brush Load features of the paint synthesizer in conjunction with the path start regionization features described above.

MSG Brush Load will use the current MSG preset to generate the brush load paint nib. When used in conjunction with the path start regionization settings described above the MSG preset will be used to generate the fill image for each region generated by the path start regionization algorithm.

More Information

Some of the information covered in this tip has been described in other tip or news tutorial posts.

How to make a custom movie brush and use it in building photo mosaic paint presets is described in this tip.

Paint Regionization is discussed in this tip.

The following Studio Artist News blog posts discuss photo mosaic effects, photo mosaic presets,vectorizer derived paint regionization.

The Studio Artist User Guide pdf includes a detailed explanation of all of the paint synthesizer controls, including explanations of all of the path start regionization generators.