Studio Artist processes movie files with Paint Action Sequences (PASeq). A PASeq can be thought of as a script that details the different processing steps needed to achieve a certain stylistic effect. PASeqs consist of a series of action steps recorded into a list. When PASeq recording is turned on, then any processing actions you run in Studio Artist will be recorded as individual action steps in the PASeq. This includes automatic actions as well as manual paint steps.

To begin, you need to open the source video you wish to process. To do this run the File : New Source and Canvas… menu command.

A standard file dialog will come up that allows you to choose a Quicktime movie file of your choice. Navigate the file system in the file dialog and select the movie file you wish to process.

After selecting the movie file you wish to process a New Canvas sizing dialog will come up. This dialog shows the size of your movie source frames as well as an adjustable canvas size. Set the canvas size to what you want your output movie frame size to be and then press OK.

For this particular example we choose the canvas size to be the same size as the source video. But Studio Artist lets you choose any canvas size you want. This allows you to take low resolution source video and generate video processing effects or paint animations at a higher resolution. So you could take normal video resolution as an input and generate HD or even IMAX processed output frame resolutions if you wish.

After selecting the source movie you wish to work with and setting a working canvas size you are ready to get started. The screenshot belows shows how i configured my Studio Artist workspace for this example. The working canvas is in the center of the workspace in white. The Source area is at the top left below the main operation toolbar. The Editor palette is positioned below the source area. The Paint Action Sequence palette is docked on the right side of the workspace.

You can of course configure the workspace any way you wish. You will need access to the Source Area, Editor, and Paint Action Sequence palette for this particular tutorial. You can turn any of the Studio Artist palettes on or off in the workspace by using the appropriate Windows menu command.

Your selected source movie should be displayed in the Source Area under the Image tab. When a source movie is loaded a set of movie transport control buttons become available under the image display. You can use these to play the movie file as well as more around between different frames in the movie.

There are a wide variety of different image operations (ip op) to choose from. Each one has different editable parameter options that can totally change the visual appearance of the ip op effect. To enter image operation mode, use the operation popup in the left side of the main operation toolbar at the top of the workspace to select Image Operation.

When you do this the Editor will reconfigure to show parameters available to edit for image operation effects. The popup at the top of the Editor will display the different image operation effects you can choose from. For this particular tutorial we’ll be working with the Threshold image operation effect. So select Threshold in the popup at the top of the Editor palette. Be aware, if you are not in Image Operation mode, then the Editor will display control panels available for whatever operation mode you are currently in. The operation popup in the main toolbar next to the Action button tells you which operation mode you are currently in.

Once you are in the Threshold ip op in Image Operation mode, you can press the Action button to run the effect.

The particular effect you will generate is a function of the different editable parameters available in the Editor for the Threshold ip op effect.

The IP Source parameter selects what is going to be processed by the ip op effect. In the screen snap above it is set to Current Layer. This means that what ever image is in the current canvas layer will be sent through the Threshold ip op effect and then the result will be placed back in the canvas.

For video processing you will want to process the source image rather than the current layer. So change the IP Source option to Source Image. This will insure that your source video frames are used as the input to the Threshold ip op effect.

Now if you press the Action button you can see what the Threshold ip op will do with it’s current parameter settings.

With the default settings the Threshold ip op generates a  black and white hard threshold effect. By modifying the editable parameters you can generate a wide range of more sophisticated threshold or black and white film noire processing effects.

Play around with the effect settings and put together a processing effect you want to apply to your source video. When you are happy with your edited effect, you are ready to record it into a Paint Action Sequence. Turn on recording in the Paint Action Sequence palette by clicking on the Rec checkbox located at the top of the Paint Action Sequence palette.

I used the modified settings below to generate a black and white film noire look.

After turning on PASeq recording and then clicked the Action button. After the threshold action runs a single action step labeled Threshold is recorded in the Paint Action Sequence. You can now turn off PASeq recording by unchecking the Rec checkbox at the top of the Paint Action Sequence palette.

You have now successfully recorded a custom paint action sequence that runs a single Threshold ip op that you also custom edited. You are now ready to process your source video file.

To process a source video file with the current paint action sequence, run the Action : Process with Paint Action Sequence : Source to Movie… menu command.

A standard file dialog will appear that lets you name your processed output movie file. Name it what you want and position it where you want it to be placed in the file system on your computer. The click OK and Studio Artist will render out your processed movie file frame by frame.

Note that Studio Artist is generating a new processed movie file. It is not modifying your existing source movie file at all, which remains untouched.

If you click cancel in the Create Movie Stream file dialog then the movie processing will still preview in your workspace but no movie file will be generated. This is useful if you want to preview the processing. To stop movie file processing for any reason, just press the spacebar. A dialog will come up asking you if you want to stop processing or continue on. Click the appropriate button to stop or continue.

If You Run Into Problems

If your output video is generated with an unchanging blank frame, then you probably didn’t setup your image operation to process the Source Image.  You need to make sure that the IP Source setting is set to Source Image for your ip op effect.

If IP Source is set to Current Layer for your ip op effect then the ip op is processing the canvas, not the source frames in the video. So if the canvas is empty then the empty canvas would be processed by the effect for each output movie frame.

An alternate approach to constructing your PASeq would be to first set the canvas to the source image.  You could then run an image operation that uses an IP Source option set to Current Layer. To set the canvas to the source image, you can either drag the source to the canvas or you can hold down the mouse on the Eraser in the operation toolbar until a list of possible erase to options comes up and then choose Source Image.

If your processed output movie file seems to have a different frame timing than your source movie file you may have setup your movie preferences to change the frame timing. In the Movie tab of the Preferences dialog there’s a preference option called Process Frame Timing.  You want the Process Frame Timing option set to  Source Movie to pass through the source movie timing to your processed output movie.  If it’s set to MovieCodec FPS then the processed output movie is retimed to a specific FPS (frames per second) setting specified in the File : Movie Codec dialog.

The movie preferences also include skip frame settings.  Skipping or duplicating frames would also change your output movie file timing, so these settings should be set to 0 if you don’t want that to happen.

Codec stands for the kind of movie compression format that is used to encode the output movie frames. You specify the movie compression codec used by the settings in File : Movie Codec dialog. Your processed output movie file will have it’s frame images compressed using your current Studio Artist movie codec settings. So your output movie file may be compressed differently than your input movie file.  This could result in a much larger movie file size on your had disk, especially if you have specified an uncompressed movie code file format for your output movie processing.

For More Information

For an introduction to working with Image Operation effects check out this tip.

Here’s another getting started tip that discusses processing a movie with a PASeq.

For more information on configuring the Studio Artist workspace check out this tip.

For a more advanced tutorial that discusses paint strategies for generating paint animation effects in processed movies check out this tip.

There are 2 new Sketch image operations (ip ops) in Studio Artist v4. These 2 ip ops are sophisticated processing effects that can be used separately or together to build a wide range of different black and white sketch effects. The Sketch ip ops can either be used to directly create raster sketch effects or to generate bezier paths that can then be used to drive the paint synthesizer.

The new Sketch ip ops in v4 are called Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass. Sketched imagery is typically generated by using thin drawing strokes to build up a representation of a source image. Representing a source image in a sketch with line vs mass has been an established artistic technique since the days of Leonardo da Vinci. Line referring to the edge structure of the image (high spatial frequency). Mass referring to the underlying luminance structure of the image (low spatial frequency). 

These 2 representational components are encapsulated into the Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass ip ops. Sketch Edge is primarily about generating sketches that representing edge structure in a source image. Sketch Mass is primarily about generating sketches that represent source luminance (or mass) via different hatching techniques. Both Sketch ip ops are capable of generating tight or loose or very abstract sketches of a given source, depending no how their editable parameters are adjusted.

The sketch example shown at the top of this tip was actually created with 2 different Sketch Mass presets min composited together.

Sketch Edge

The Sketch Edge Editor control panel is shown below. A radically large number of different sketch effects can be generated depending on how you adjust these editable parameters.

A processed example from the above Sketch Edge parameter settings is shown below. Note that these paramters generate a fairly tight representation.

To loosen up the representation, a different EdgeLook can be chosen. 

For example, changing the EdgeLook to Simplify Extreme will generate the following processed example, which has a looser visual appearance.

Depending on how you adjust the editable parameters you can radically change the visual appearance of the sketch effect, from very representational to very abstract. The example below is a very different rougher sketch style.

It was created with the following parameter changes.

The Smart Triangle Edge Look setting generates a fairly abstract sketch based on using sketched triangle shapes. The Bloom+Edge PostEFX setting in combination with the On1 Finish setting create the burned out stroke appearance, which is very different than the first 2 examples that have a smoother pencil sketch appearance to the line strokes that make up the sketch.

Colorizing a Black and White Sketch Image

You can use the Colorize Ip Op to subtly colorize a black and white sketch with the colors from the source image. Here’s an example of a colorized version of the last black and white abstracted sketch effect.

The Editor settings for the Colorize Ip Op used to generate the above colorized sketch are shown below.

The Image Source is what will be colorized by the effect.  We chose the IP Source, which is set to the Current Layer. Whatever is in the canvas current layer will be colorized with these settings.

Now we need to choose where the color is coming from, which is determined by the Color Source setting. We chose Source for the Color Source setting, which means the color used for the colorization operation is coming from the Studio Artist source image.

Different Color Space settings will generate different colorization effects. You should try different ones to determine what colorization effect you like the best for your particular sketch image.

Sketch Mass

The Sketch Mass Ip Op can generate a large number of different sketch effects that try to represent the underlying mass of the source image being sketched. Since sketches are composed of thin lines, mass is represented using different hatching patterns. Sketch Mass can try to accurately reproduce source mass or luminance, or it can work in a more sophisticated way that mirrors how a human artist would try to represent positive and negative space in an image (as opposed to blindly reproducing luminance) which can lead to more natural looking sketch effects.

The example above was generated with the following Sketch Mass settings. The particular hatching pattern used in the sketch is generated by the BullsEye Hatch setting.

A looser sketch can be generated by changing the Hatch and EdgeLook settings, as shown below.

The following Hatch and EdgeLook setting changes were used to create the modified sketch above with the looser appearance.

Changing the Mass setting changes the way the effect models the source mass and can potentially change the appearance of the mass sketch quite a bit, as seen in the example below.

The settings for the example above are shown in the screen snap below. The Mass option was changed from Pos-Neg to SLA FixThres. The EdgeScan was changed from Default to Maximize Length. This new Edge Scan setting tries to maximize the length of the strokes by attaching adjacent ones, and you can see the results in the overall appearance of the sketch, which seems to have fewer sketch lines that are longer (as compared to the previous example).

Generating Bezier Paths

Both Sketch Edge and Sketch Mass can also be used to generate a set of Bezier paths, as opposed to their normal operation which generates a raster image as the sketch effect. To generate a set of Bezier paths, you would run the new Path : Generate Paths : from Ip Op menu command. If either of the Sketch ip ops is the current ip op, then when you run this menu command they will generate a set of bezier paths that represent the sketch effect they are generating and add them to the current layer’s Bezier path frame.

The generate paths from ip op menu command is a new feature in version 4. Not every ip op offers this functionality, so if the current ip op is not one that offers an option to generate Bezier paths then the menu will be disabled.

The generated Bezier paths are added to the existing contents of the current layer’s Bezier path frame. So you would generally want to erase the existing Bezier path frame before running a generate paths menu command. You could either do this by adding an erase path layer menu command as a prior step in a PASeq, or you could turn on the Erase before Action path layer record option menu flag before running the generate paths menu command.

Once you have generated a set of Bezier paths for your sketch effect, you can then use any paint synthesizer preset to draw them in an infinite variety of different paint styles. To do that you would first select the particular paint preset you wanted to use to draw in the Bezier paths associated with the sketch. You could then run the Path : Paint Paths : Full Layer menu command. 

Generating Vector Sketches as SVG or PDF files

Studio Artist 4’s paint synthesizer has a number of new vector output features. You can use these new vector paint features in conjunction with the Bezier path generation step discussed above to generate full vector output for your Sketch ip op effects. This can be especially useful for high resolution printing since SVG or PDF files are resolution independent and can therefore be scaled without any information loss for printing on very high resolution printers.

Image Operations (Ip Op) are image processing effects. There are a large number of them currently in Studio Artist (71 when this tip was written). While this may seem large, the actual number of different visual effects you can generate with these Ip Ops is much larger. Many Ip Op effects have adjustable algorithm parameters that can totally change what any given Ip Op effect does. By working with different Ip Op effects and adjusting their internal editable parameters you can create an extremely wide range of different visual effects useful for processing 2D images or video.  

All of the effects also have sophisticated compositing parameters that again can totally change what a particular effect does. For example, if a Blur effect is used with an Edge composite setting it is turned into a sharpening effect.  

Effect input can be specified via the IP Source parameter to be any layer, including the current layer’s alpha channel, or the current region selection. Effect output can also be routed to the layer alpha channel or current region selection (via specific Composite parameter settings). So in addition to providing an extreme number of different visual effects, Ip Ops can also be used for region selection or alpha channel special effects or cleanup.

Accessing Image Operations

There are a large number of different prebuilt image operation presets. You can use the Preset palette when in Image Operation mode to access individual presets organized by Collection and Category.  The screen snapshot below shows a few specific Ip Op presets (Feather, Flattened Source, etc) in the General category in the Default collection.  Clicking on any of the individual presets displayed in the Preset palette will load them as the current active preset.

Like all Studio Artist presets, they are completely adjustable and consist of individual editable parameters you can adjust in the Editor palette.

The popup control at the top of the image operation Editor can be used to select a specific image operation effect. The adjustable controls available at the top of the Editor control list will change depending on which image operation effect you choose to work with. There are also a set of generic image operation controls at the bottom of the Editor control list like Mix, IP Source, Composite, etc that are available in every image operation effect.

You can also use the main Operation menu to access any of the individual image operation effects.

This menu lets you access image operation effects as organized by effect types, or alphabetically. Choosing a specific image operation effect using the operation menus will automatically bring up the Editor configured for the selected effect.  

Working with Ip Op Effects

The best way to get a feel for the vast range of image operation effects is to spend some time working through the different Ip Op effects and seeing what they do.

Remember that you need to specify the source for the effect using the IP Source control. The default IP Source is the Current Layer, which means that whatever is in the current canvas layer is used as the input for the effect. If you wish to use the Source Image as the input to the effect you need to specify Source Image in the IP Source control.  The ability to select any of the existing layers or region selection as an IP Source is an extremely powerful advanced feature.

The Mix control lets you mix the effect output with the existing layer contents.  100% Mix means full effect output, 50% Mix means the effect output will be evenly mixed with the current layer contents.  

The Composite control lets you specify different compositing options for the effect.  Compositing means that the current layer contents and the effect output are combined together using the specific kind of compositing specified.  Studio Artist’s approach to inline compositing is very powerful and allows you to create effects in a single layer that would require multiple layers to achieve in other programs.

The Studio Artist User Guide pdf gives specific information on all of the different IP Op effects, including an explanation for all of the editable parameters for each individual effect.