Studio Artist Tips

Movie layers can be used to paint or modify individual frames of a movie file. You could use movie layers to construct hand drawn animation a frame at a time, or to add paint or image processing effects to specific frames in an existing movie file. Movie layers are a new feature in v4 that replace the functionality associated with the old canvas movie features available in earlier versions of Studio Artist. This tip will discuss how to work with movie layers in Studio Artist 4.

Continue reading Movie Layers in Depth

This tip will discuss how to create an embedded alpha channel in a movie file you are generating with Studio Artist. Embedded alpha channels could be associated with movie stream or action processing movie file output.

Continue reading Generated a Movie with an Embedded Alpha Channel

Versions of Studio Artist prior to v4 had various keyframe options in the layer timeline. These included bezier, source, and content keyframes. Version 4 integrates the old layer timeline into the PASeq timeline. The old layer keyframe functionality is now accessible by using the new v4 Context action steps recorded in a PASeq. This tip will discuss how to use PASeq contexts to record bezier, source or layer content keyframes. Continue reading Old Layer Keyframe Features

The Studio Artist 4 paint synthesizer contains all of the features available in previous versions of Studio Artist plus many additional editable options. However, the mechanics of editing the version 4 paint synthesizer is somewhat different than in previous versions of Studio Artist. This tip will discuss how to work with the new version 4 Editor palette.

Continue reading Working with the Editor Palette

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.

Continue reading Building Tone in an Image

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.

Continue reading Generating Bezier Paths from Images

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.

Continue reading Using MSG to Extend the Paint Synthesizer

Studio Artist has 5 different Bezier Path Memories.  Four of them are global memories and one is internal to the paint synthesizer.  The bezier path memories can be used to record, store, and playback sets of bezier paths.

You can use the path memories as working storage when editing a bezier sketch or animation. You can also use the path memories to build paint synthesizer presets that incorporate bezier paths or shapes as a part of the way a paint preset draws. This tip will discuss how to work with the bezier path memories.

Continue reading Working with the Bezier Path Memories

Loop Action is a new feature in Studio Artist 4. Running loop action causes the current preset to continuously run in a loop until the loop cycle is stopped by pressing the spacebar. You can select new presets while running loop action and the loop will automatically switch to live processing with the new selected preset at the beginning of the next loop cycle.

Loop action has a wide variety of uses, including live visual performance, live video processing, live video synthesis, live preview of dynamic time particle behavior, etc.

Continue reading Loop Action

The Studio Artist 4 workspace is extremely user configurable. This tip will discuss how you can reorganize and configure the workspace to suit your particular style of working.

Continue reading Configuring the Workspace