Passport Control Dehumization Zone

 

Generative Keyframing Torture Test1

 

Trying out some of the new generative key-framing edits to build up a little bit of complexity from a few simple short PASeq sub animations derived from key-framed manual paint strokes.

Some Keyframe Tests

 

Silly test of some new editing features for generative keyframing in the PASeq timeline.

Testing the Invert Loop Extend editing feature.

Testing Loop Repeat Extend editing feature.

More Experiments

 

More Flow Experiments

 

Surfs Up

 

Totally different approach to go for that certain look.

Cat StillLife

 

Sill image from a paint animation.  A study in working with flow.

Cat Transitions

I stumbled upon a cool new technique playing with some cat photos last night.  I'm going to see if i can encapsulate what i was doing into a single manipulatable effect.
 

Hand Animation Test

 

I built up a series of Transition Context keyframes by hand working with some photos taken on an iPad and then manipulated using Interactive Warp.  I'm using the new option v click option to record the current canvas into the Transition Context as a keyframe.

Interesting Application of the new Transition IpOp Effect

 

Took the world's dumbest approach to building paint animation, and then did a 50% Transition back to the source movie as the second step in the PASeq.

Turned off the Transition step so it's just the auto-paint action step used in above.

Loaded a Style image and added a second Transition IpOp action step to the PASeq to pull in some stylization.

Data augmented the Style image and added some energy into the recursive system with some extra PASeq action steps.

Changed the Style to be a Constructivist image rather than the Van Gogh image, and jacked up the energy in the recursive system.

Pulp Styles

 

Mixing it Up with Style Transformations

 

Stylization Experiments

 

Working with a very small set of Futurist art images that are heavily data-augmented using various geometric transformations, and then loaded into a Transition Context in Studio Artist V5.5.5.  The painting is the result of an iterative process that plays out over time while the loaded Style is being continuously transformed based on the Transition Context output.

Different paint stylization experiment based on a folder of Constructivist art imagery.

Futurist Style Experiments

 

Working with a folder of Futurist imagery i data augmented in Studio Artist and then loaded into a Transition Context sending its output to the Style buffer. I'm also working with different Source movie files in all of these.

Working Through Some Style Transfer Experiments

 

Experiments with combining a source movie file with a style generated from data augmented sample images curated to be in the Constructivist style.  Both of those were handled with Source Context and Transition Context action steps.  The style data augmentation was done fully automatically using procedural key-framed effects recorded in an initial working PASeq file.  The full animation was action animated out using that initial working PASeq to a Transition Context.

I'm experimenting with different kinds of Geodesic Flow in these examples.  You need to experiment if you want to understand all of the different approaches one could use to generate geodesic flow interpolation for canvas in-filling.  And we haven't even gotten into using MSG to do it yet.  Because MSG is geodesic rich.  Lots of options.

Mixing Up the Source

 

Resonate Paint Experiment

 

Reworking an Old PASeq Preset

 

Logo

 

Flipper

 

Flipper1

 

Resonate Paint Experiment

 

Surfers

 

A few things going on in this 2D painted canvas.  It is a painting made from a movie file.  It contains information from multiple frames in the static painted image. It incorporates movement in the video to impart local flow to the paint strokes.  The paint itself also incorporated a resonate energy process that introduces form and structure on is own that interacts with the structure in the moving video frames.

Little Experiment

Dumb Example of a Very Cool Feature

 

Testing some cool new Studio Artist V5.5.5 features with the world's stupidest animation example.

Incorporating the Paint Synthesizer into Transformation Context Effects.

 

The cool thing about Studio Artist V5.5 is that you can use the power of the rest of the interface to extend the visual aesthetics of transition context interpolation effects.

Transition Contexts can interpolate image keyframes, movie keyframes with a number of different artistic time based interpolation effects.  And there is a definite look to them. But suppose you want to modify that, make it different.

It is super easy to do in the PASeq editor.  For this example i used the paint synthesizer to introduce different spatial octaves of localized flow into the canvas.  And i used that trick move involving the style buffer working as a time buffer for the output canvas.  Which can be used to impart resonate energy into the rendering system.

Single Image Transformation

 

Procedural animation derived off of a single image.  Insert your custom image here.  

I built a 3 step PASeq that was keyframed to build 100 so transformed source image distortions.  That keyframe in to unity at the very end.

I then animated that out to a transition context.  Yes, you heard that right.  Fully automatic.

I then time expanded the PASeq timeline, which now contains that transition context and it's associated keyframed images on disk.

So i'm running Alg4 as the transition interpolation option.  And i'm doing that slick move with the style buffer where you record the end of frame processing, and then Fixed Image mixing it back in at the very beginning of the next frame processing cycle (choose your Mix setting wisely).

You can now3 use this step interval in time through the style buffer to build a resonate filter that whose effects also play out over time.

Vertical Slats Embed Bezier Action Paint

Embedded Vectorizer preset in the paint synthesizer.  Running it on a 10 frame sub-nesting from a Transition Context. single movie file key.

Reordered the bezier indexes to make the animation smoother.

Tried working with a folder of still images output from gallery show runs.

After reordering the indexes.

Checking out a hybrid approach that is running the embedded bezier interpolation along with the transition context output combined together.

I turned off all of the auto paint action steps for this one, so you only see the transition context output for the transitions.  Again, this is just one stock transition algorithm setup, you could extensively adjust parameters associated with it to fine tine what is happening.

I turned the flow auto paint action steps back on again. The embedded bezier is still off.

Tweaked the PASeq to adda recursive feedback component to introduce some resonate flow into the animation.

 

Vectorizer Outline Geodesic Experiment

 

Fixed the bug so that you can use Vectorizer Outline technique to generate hard (no anti-alias) vectors for working with geodesic fill.

Adding some gain and recursive mixing to the system so it can start to self oscillate.

Added a damping force in the background areas to damp out the resonance in the static background.

Introduced a Content Context key-framing a movie file to use to create a second geodesic flow field in the background.

Stylized the vectors in the background and added some time particle text paint.

Pushed it too hard and ended up with most of the image resonate self-oscillating.

Tried to push it in a different direction.

One Liner Experiment

One continuous paint path generated from a set of texture probability start points.  Erasing to white each frame, different start points for each frame.

You can load it into a Transition Context and turn on sub-nested keyframing to smooth it out.

Changed the start points to be time particles.

Working the system to start to pull out the details in the canvas (as opposed to dialing in the source).

 

Continuous Line Drawing

 

Avoiding that TSP sort bug while working with a continuous single line drawing in the Studio Artist V5.5.5 paint synthesizer.

Fabulous TSP Sort Bug

 

Enjoy the visual look of the TSP sort bug before we fix it.

Resonant Sketch Mass

 

Motion Flow

 

Painting Interest Point Movement

 

Simple factory init paint edited to paint in interest point movement in the video. Added a simple interactive warp dispersion.

More Geodesic Fill Experiments

 

The stuff i'm painting with is composed of single pixel threshold edges that is then filled in across the rest of the canvas by orientation modulated geodesic fill.

Mixing in a recursive blend of the previous frame output.

I added a motion displacement to my 1 pixel threshold masks to spread them out (using max compositing with their original mask) where there is movement in the video. I also added some extra sharpening, and a very subtle high adaptivity image compressor boost.  You can see that we are right on the edge of reaction-diffusion texturing from the inherent video feedback in the overall recursive system.

TSP Paint Animation Experiments

The drawing in all of these is a single continuous paint stroke generated from a TSP (traveling salesman problem) sort of start points generated from an edge scan.

Animated Line Screen Effects

SVG in an Image Folder Brush

 

Some quick experiments using SVG files instead of images in an image folder brush in Studio Artist V5.5.

So i think coming up with a good set of different basic designs for the elements would be very useful. Sets of SVG elements that work well together in different paint scenarios for building up an overall design.

Puzzle pieces that work together for building ornamental designs by being laid down along a line in different symmetry configurations would also be great. 

Figuring out what works and doesn't work for this is going to be an iterative process.  You can see that that you would like the stems to star in the center rather than the bottom when used like they are along a line above.  And you would want the sizing to be more consistent so you can lay them out with a fixed spacing and have them line up with each other properly.  Geometric elements that work well together would also be cool.

How you deal with the notion of alpha for the brush is also an interesting question. Because i'm working with the svg elements as image brushes above, i'm using the solid 255 white background as the matte (255 doesn't draw).

Dual LineScreen Workout

 

More procedural keyframing experiments.

LineScreen Block Regionize Workout

 

Continuing our Generative keyframe feature marathon, we'll dive into giving the old LineScreen Block Regionize IpOp effect a workout.

Generative Keyframing Test

 

Working on automating effect keyframing with various generative commands.

I added one thing to the PASeq above.

Tweak it a little bit.

Processed a movie file with the procedurally keyframed PASeq (time expanded it to fit).

Some Hyper Realism Experiments

Fun With Interactive Warp

 

Dumb Test of Another Cool Feature

 

Stupid test of another cool new feature.  You can record a History Sequence of a series of hand drawn paint strokes(or anything else for that matter), and then run a menu command to convert it into a keyframes single action step that transitions over time in the Paint Action Sequence.

This is a bug, but i think there is another interesting feature lurking in it that could be developed out into something finished.

Anchored Factory Init Paint Animation

 

Study in anchoring the start point positions of a lightly tweaked factory init raster paint preset.

World's Dumbest Test of Cool New Feature

 

Stupid test animation of the world's coolest new feature in Studio Artist V5.5.5.  I will come up with another one to do it justice. Consider it a teaser.  Movie layers are back.  Just not how you expected them to appear.

All the motion is algorithmic.  The Transition Context keyframes were built within Studio Artist, no external keyframe loads.

Of course it is totally trivial to flip it in time as an extension, making it a palindrome with a slight tag at the end.

Bezier Embed AutoPaint WorkOut

 

Laying down the base structure with auto-generated embedded bezier auto-paint keyframes derived off of virtual sub-nested source movie keyframes.  We're doing a 10 frame sub-nest.  We loaded a source movie, then recorded a single Transition Context keyframe derived off of that source movie file.

Same base structure, but re-ordered the indexing of the embedded bezier paths in each auto-paint keyframe.

Introduced some motion flow dissipation into the mix.

Submission

 

Taking some of the new Transition Context features in Studio Artist V5.5.5.

Bending it a different direction.

How to Grind the Mac Video Sub-Basement into the Dirt

Last frame in a video render that totally trashed the internals of the mac video handling routines.  Yes, we made it weep.

You would not think this would be so hard.  Switched from dynamic allocation/deallocation of video objects to use the pool of them we keep around to prevent the mac from crapping out when it hits that magic 100.

Finished hooking up the frame offsets for the movie keys in Transition Contexts.

 

More Paint Flow Experiments

 

Simple Demo

Two image brushed and one movie brush keyframe animated in the PASeq timeline.  I'm generating the dispersion by auto-generating bezier paths from the canvas edges and then painting a wet water paint with them.
 

Push It

 

Procedural Time Particle QuickEdits

 

Testing out the new Time Particle Paint QuickEdits in Studio Artist V5.5.5.

Let's use the new SideChain IpOp effect to help mold the spatial density of the cooking paint soup.

Continuing to mold the spatial density of the dispersive flow paint fill-in over time.

New Vectorizer Style Options

 

Added style options to the Vectorizer Source and Source color in Studio Artist V5.5.5.  I'm using the source image as the Vectorizer source, the Style image as the Vectorizer color source, and i'm clipping the generated regions with the StyleLumThreshold.

Oil Rigs Lite with Inject Bus Modulation

 

Transition Context with some key-framed oil-rig photos run through a very simple paint preset and a warp dissipation effect.

Added some multi-octave paint synthesizer sculpting of the local color density.

Added a second dissipative force.

Different Approach

 

Same keyframes, same regions as the last post. Different approach to doing the painting over time.

Same keyframes and regions as above, but modified the fine line drawing to do a TSP sort, and messed with the dispersion and enhancement elements to get the paint flow in the ballpark. It's amazing how sensitive the recursive painting process that occurs over time in successive video frames is to very minor perturbations in the Mix ratios of those elements.

Dialing it in. Molding the dispersion forces.

Mondo Simplify Paint Animation

 

Added Mondo Simplify as a new path start regionization option in the Studio Artist V5.5.5 paint synthesizer. I didn't normalize the # of regions in all of the embedded bezier keyframes, so you can see the pop-in at the transitions because of that.  Diving into implementing a better Split option for index normalization.  The old one is fine for paint paths, but not great for regions.

Normalized the indexes using Duplicate and added a 70% Mix Black Smart Outline that tracks the Transition Context output to the Source.

Taking it Back to Basics

 

This whole exercise is a great workout of the new internal plumbing.  We're almost ready to inaugurate the new Injection Bus.

First test of the new Injection Bus. Routing the destination key image from the Transition Context to the Bruh Load Source.

Hooking Up the Plumbing

 

Almost there.  One more piece of the puzzle to get working.

Another piece of the puzzle.  Still not finished.

Not where i'm ultimately headed, but a fun diversion stop-over.

Working with what is there before moving on to the final goal.

Block Transitions

 

Simple paint animation from some Vectorizer simple block renditions.

Added some dispersion before the embedded auto-paint action step.

Ran the fast minimal distance sort reordering without doing any normalization.

Facial Alignment Transitions

 

So of course the facial alignment is making its way int Transition Contexts as a new transition effect.  I'm outputting from the Transition Context to the Source, and then running a simpleVectorizer preset for the animation run output.

Facial Alignment Gallery Show Run

 

Transition Context manipulation of some gallery show output that was based on face images auto-aligned to a standard normalized position in the canvas.

Here's another one from an earlier gallery show run in the day using a different alignment routine.

More Style Experiments

 

Giving the Texture Synthesizer new life in Studio Artist V5.5.5.  Futurist loaded style image.

Face Normalize Data Augmentation

 

I'm working on a facial normalize data augmentation option for gallery show.  It auto-detects the main face in the source image, and then normalizes the position to a standard location.  I'm just doing the center points right now, but i'll add a scale option as well.

So why would you want to do this? Have you ever noticed how those StyleGAN faces are all in a standard normalized central position. Did you ever wonder why they did that?  Think it though carefully.

A few more simple examples of stacking the source faces below in successive gallery show cycles. Using our old friend the paint synthesizer Init QuickEdit.

You can see the effect of not doing the size scaling in that last one.  Which could be fun for artistic purposes. But of course you want that full normalization to a standard face position for other applications.

You have been able to do this kind of thing in a much more tedious way in Studio Artist forever.  Using the Inverse Warp Context action step.  But you had to manually draw the bezier curves for the inverse warp. Just doing it automatically this new way is way simpler.  Although it's going to fail for any source image that the frontal face detector craps out on.

I will also build another automatic one using the facial features.  It will have a very different visual aesthetic to it, since it will be based on a sparse warp.  I need to provide an option to use these in the high level Studio Artist interface as well. So we will add that to the ridiculously long 'to-do' list as well.

Finished Render from Evolution Series

 

Didn't quite get it where i wanted it to end up. Ideally i'd like more of an edge definition separation between the 3 spinning people and the background.  I could start another render cycle with some tweaks, add some pos-neg space modulation, but i'm going to start on the Image Compeller Ip Op effect to dial it in that way instead.

The paint strokes in this are all time particles, so you can see they have persistence and movement over multiple frames.  I've started on some time particle QuickEdits in Studio Artist V5.5.5.

Of course as soon as i typed out the above i realized that i could configure a mini-compeller directly inside of the paint synthesizer to optimize the top paint animation i wasn't quite happy with. So i did. And you can see the results here in this second paint animation.

Evolution

 

Build Up the Paint Experiements

 

Built up the static painting from a 30 frame PASeq animation. The very simple paint was keyframed over the 30 frame animation (180 degree rotation of the polar path angle).

Used the facial feature detection bezier path generator along with some Threshold IpOp effect skeleton to build a dark think scaffolding core.  Used the Mondo Simplify IpOp effect to build a colored shell around the core armature. Used some clever multi- octave adaptive expansion (low Mix) to add some mid frequency structure to the colored shell.  Cooked in some multi-octave gradient lighting and adaptive expansion to raise the shell to a density that better fills the color space of the digital pixel frame.

Used the Color Edge IpOp effect to lay down some hard colored edges (no anti-aliasing) on a solid white background.  then used the Geodesic Falloff IpOp effect to infill the white background from the hard colored edge core structure.

Thought it would be fun to add some style modulation to that last one. I changed the Geodesic Fill a little, added style color palette modulation, and used the Style to modulate a Displacement IpOp effect of the sparse color armature prior to filling in the overall structure from it.  Used a small jpeg of some futurist period artwork for the Loaded Style image.

Dispersion Experiments

 

Trying different variations of real thin paint lines that have path starts tied to high texture areas of a source video followed by intricate adjustments of the dispersion process that generates the 'flow' effect in the video. I'm using Flow modulation to SideChain modulate a blur effect to help sculpt the dispersion, which is primarily created by a self modulating warp effect.

Different Texture Synthesis Approaches in Painting

 

Scribble Paint Animation

 

More adventures with the Init QuickEdit. Scaled the brush size down to 1 pixel, added some path angle procedural modulation to give it some scribble, used Smart Blur and some Gradient Lighting to shine it up, added some Threshold IpOp Min composited to add a little bit of structure.

So i have my 'lay down stuff' component, and i have my 'dispersion' component. Very simple.

To mix things up i used the new SideChain IpOp effect to generate a modified sub-octave motion mask, flipped it, and then used it to mask some wet drop paint in the non-moving background i made by taking one of Craig's factory presets and doing a quick edit.

Lorenze Attractor Paint Animation Test

 

Rendered this out as a test of a PASeq i received from a beta tester. It uses a MSG preset that generates a Lorenz chaotic attractor that is then used in the paint synthesizer via MSG path start scan (and a paint to last start point via spline path shape) to control where painting occurs.  It's embedded in a DualPaint action step in a PASeq that uses a warp as the dual op.

Reaction - Diffusion : The Battle for Dominance

 

Interesting idea for a transition effect. The fine tuning is very sensitive to small parameter perturbations.

Adventures in Reaction-Diffusion Land

 

Working with dynamic recursive dissipative processes to build up reaction-diffusion texturing in animation renders.

Texture Synthesizer Lead Foil Look1

 

Texture Synthesizer in Studio Artist V5.5 used to build structured turbulence rendering.

Bezier Facial Feature Detection Tracking Test 1

 

Using the Path : Generate paths : from Src Facial Features menu command to auto-generate a single bezier path based off of the facial features of the source movie. Used Mondo Simplify IpOp with 50% Mix for the backing.

So i'm auto-masking the Mondo Simplify IpOp in this second one.

I added a second Mondo Simplify IpOp action step at the beginning of the PASeq to process the previous output frame to smooth out the trail buildup over time.