Now, we're not going to mess around with the Path Shape or Path End palettes. Instead, we're going to skip ahead to Path Application. Leave Repeat Stroke at 1, but set Option, Mode and Spacing to Maximum, Spatial Distance and 148, respectively. If you hit Action, you'll now see a big difference in the way the strokes are applied. They now appear to be dabs rather than full strokes. (Change the settings one at a time to see how each affects the way the path is applied. Basically, Maximum creates the dab effect, while Spacing separates out the dabs.

Here we're going to go in and change the Brush Source settings. The effect of changing a brush's shape is fairly self-evident. Take a look at my palette settings for Brush Source on the right. The main difference is that I've beefed up the size and direction symmetry of the brush, as well as added in some randomness (RndRadius).

Now we're going to make the big setting that changes everything about this Paint Patch. Go into Brush Type and switch the Brush Type to Geodesic Rectangular. Change the Max Count to 30 and the Iterations to 20. (For 20 Iterations, you'll have to type in the number manually; the slider won't go that high.) Now hit Action. That's pretty slick, isn't it?

All that's left to do is to make a few subtle changes to make the effect a little nicer. Under Brush Modulation, change Background Texture Modifier to Image Orient. I also want to change the background texture. So set the Orient Mod and Tracking to "Path." Switch Turb Levels to 8, Turb Algorithm to 11 and Size to 4. You'll see the changes in the palette as you make them. The changes on the Canvas will be more subtle. Under Miscellaneous, change "AutoDraw Pres" to Image Orient; change the pressure range to 10 to 95; and change Region Spacing to 1.

And that's pretty much it. As you've seen, the major settings that affected the way this Paint Patch worked were the Brush Type (Geodesic Rectangular), the Paint Fill and the Path Start. I've created some variations on some of the other Paint Synthesizer settings, but nothing too major. You can examine the differences between various settings by downloading my collection of Presets here. (Remember that "Rubbing 7" is the one used in this tutorial.)

For more information on Synthetik Studio Artist, read our review, visit our user forum or head over to our tutorials section for some more insights. Synthetik Software is at http://www.synthetik.com.

Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of the Creative Mac, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion and Synthetik Studio Artist WWUGs; and executive producer of Creative Mac, Digital Media Designer, Digital Pro Sound, Digital Webcast, Plug-in Central, Presentation Master, ProAudio.net and Video Systems sites. All are part of the Digital Media Net family of online industry hubs.