What you'll
notice is that the first set of changes produced a gray wash that
also can darken any underlying strokes but doesn't do anything
really interesting. The second set of changes added some clumpiness
and added the ability to create much more significant bleed on
the underlying stroke. (To mellow this out a bit, you can bring
down the blend percentage.)
One of the
things you might notice whenever you use Mix Apply/Displace Out
is that you get some spacing along your stroke. If you want to
cut down this spacing (or increase it), go into the Path Application
panel of the Paint Synthesizer and adjust the parameter called
"Spacing %." If you take it down to 0, you should get
smoother paths.
In this pane,
you'll also see a parameter called "Displace," which,
by default, is set to None. Now, maybe you don't want your wash
to distort your stroke, but this parameter can also be used for
some other interesting effects.
The four examples
above all use the same Paint Fill parameters we discussed earlier.
The only difference is their Displace mode. The one on the left
uses Chaotic; the second uses Uniform Random 2D; the third uses
Rossler; and the fourth uses Luminance. All subsettings are default.
(You will find all four of these in the downloadable
set of washes I've created.) Play around with other forms
of displacement as well. Some will distort your strokes into wavy
curves. Others will, like the ones above, add depth and texture
to a simple stroke.
We can also
change the type of brush being used to produce even more varied
effects. You make these changes under the Paint Synthesizer palette
called "Brush Type," which, by default, is set to Procedural
Brush. Change these settings to produce variations seen below.
The image
on the left is a Procedural Brush; the second is a Source Brush;
the third is a Stretch1 Source Brush; and the fourth is a Computational
Stretch.
Finally, you're
probably going to want to modify the height and width of the wash
you're using, since, typically, washes are applied with less delicate
tools. To change the size of the brush, go into the Paint Synthesizer
palette called "Brush Source." To alter the size of
the brush, change the Horizontal and Vertical parameters. (For
values higher than 100, you just have to enter the number manually
rather than using the slider.) In this same palette, you can also
change the shape of the brush by tweaking the Corner Pull, Pre
Sym and Post Sym values.
If you have
no use for Computational Brushes, you can also import an image
to use as a brush, in which case the size will be determined by
the image you bring in. To do this, change the Brush Source to
Image. Then select the File menu and choose "New Image Brush...."
Select your image, and you're good to go.
In our examples,
you can also use pressure from an input tablet to determine the
size of the brush you're using, in which case the values you've
entered represent the maximum size of the brush. (The same applies
to image brushes; just remember that large images can slow things
down.) Download my 20 wash presets here.
For more Studio Artist presets, visit http://www.creativemac.com/downloads/studioartist/index.htm.
For more information about Studio Artist or to download a demo,
visit http://www.synthetik.com.
