by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
As one reader
pointed out to me last week, it's been a little too long since
our last look at Synthetik Studio Artist. I had promised I'd
show you a post-processing technique that allows you to vary
strokes over time. Let it never be said that Dave fails to follow
through on his promises, even if such fulfillment does take
some time. Now, this is not the same as making strokes longer
or shorter over time. I'll cover that one in a future installment
(just as soon as another reader reminds me that I'm lagging).
Instead, this technique allows you to change the actual number
of strokes that appear in your video.
Typically
in a situation involving this technique, you're going to want
to use it as an alternative to simple fading of the movie in
and out. Rather, this will let you phase the image in
and out by moving from no strokes to full strokes and back to
none. If you click on the image below, you'll see an example
of what I'm talking about. This shows a skydiver (actually a
skyboarder) jumping out of a plane and performing some aerobatics.
You'll see a white image to start with, followed by some pencil
sketch, followed by a full-color image. Please keep in mind
that compression for the Web has altered the look of the video
somewhat.
This is
not a terribly difficult technique, but, as with all things
Studio Artist, it's also not readily apparent how you can go
about doing it. If you don't already have Studio Artist but
want to follow along and see what it's all about, visit http://www.synthetik.com
to download a demo.
For this
example, I'm going to phase in two separate brush stroke types:
a pencil outline and a color fill. And, what's more, I'm going
to stagger them so that the outline appears first, with the
color filling in a bit later. I'm also going to apply a couple
of my favorite Studio Artist Image Operations, which are irrelevant
to the tutorial but make the movie look better. These are Image
Compressor and Geodesic Watershed. I'll discuss these a little
bit later on.
We're going
to work this one stroke at a time to make things simple. And,
while I'll be using two specific types of strokes for this example,
you can use this technique with any Studio Artist preset or
Paint Patches that you create yourself. In fact, I did create
these Paint Patches myself, which you can download
here and use yourself. Also, if you happened to like the
example above, you can download
my PASeq here, which will let you apply exactly the same
effects to your own movies.
Phase
in
Start by opening up Studio Artist and choosing the movie
that you plan to process as your Source Image. Don't worry about
damaging your original footage; we're not going to be doing
anything to it except using it as a source for our final output.
The original footage will be untouched.
Then open
up the Paint Action window (PASeq window), and erase what's
there. Click the Record button in the PASeq window, and then
follow these steps.
1. Click
the little arrow above your Canvas to set the Canvas to white.
(Do this even if your Canvas is already white because it needs
to be recorded in the PASeq.)
2. Choose
your preset (or custom Paint Patch), and click the Action button.
Don't worry about how long it runs. We'll be adjusting all of
this later. So go ahead and stop it whenever you'd like.
Click the Play button in your
source window
to advance to a frame that will be typical
of your movie. This will help you get your
settings just right.
Shortcut:
You can use Command-Spacebar to start an action and Spacebar
to stop it.
3. Uncheck
the Record button in the PASeq window.
4. Click
on the first frame in your PASeq timeline (the one that's colored
red). Your action will automatically redraw itself; but don't
worry about this, as we'll be modifying everything manually
so that, in the end, you'll have only the number of strokes
you want.
The first frame of each action
in your PASeq timeline has a
keyframe, indicated by the red coloration. You can set
your own keyframes or modify existing ones by
Option-clicking on the desired frame.
5. Switch
to the Paint Synthesizer and open up the palette called Path
Start. Right at the top you'll see a field labeled "Max Strokes."
Change the value to 0.
6. Now Option-click
on the first frame in your PASeq timeline. You've now set the
first and all subsequent frames to render zero strokes. Simple?
It surely is.
page
1, 2, 3,
complete, home
