control net resynthesis experiment

 

Abstract MSG - vectorizer hybrid procedural image above.  Used that as the only input to a StableDiffusion ControlNet model with different feature control guides derived from above (output shown below). So no text prompting, just the different feature vector options driving the ControlNet SD synthesis.  I was curious how the different feature vector control nets option might work for pure abstract image resynthesis.  As compared to the more typical CLIP image latent embedding used as a resynthesis guide, which in general works really well for this kind of thing.

new Order

 

hookipaDrifter

 

Image Compeller Noise Sculpting

 

Accordion Bend

 

MSG Procedural

 

Onwards to Studio Artist V6

 

First image output from the ongoing Studio Artist V6 development port.

Soothing Procedurals

Let's put MSG (Modular Synthesized Graphics) to work in Studio Artist V5 to create some calming procedural art imagery. Far away from the noise of today's news.

Sunny skies melting, melting

New findings, published Thursday in The Cryosphere, show that last summer’s record melt wasn’t just the result of extreme heat that turned the ice sheet liquid. Instead, bizarrely sunny skies actually locked in over the island.

In an interesting coincidence, that sounds exactly like the weather in Haiku on Maui in summer 2019. Which should maybe concern you as well since it's supposed to be essentially rain forest climate here on this part of the island.

The greatest emergancy is the lack of emergancy.

This thesis does not mean that a crisis such as the coronavirus is not a fundamental emergency that we must confront at all levels. It simply suggests the greatest emergency are the ones we do not confront. These include, among others, economic inequality, refugee crises, and climate change. Despite the warnings of scientists and activists since the 1970s, climate change is responsible for the death of seven million human beings every year because of air pollution. We can only hope climate change might also become an “emergency,” fought with the same unified purpose by many people as is now.

Reality is shifting

At a fundamental level, physical reality defies our most basic intuitions about causality and locality, which is to say about time and space. Our senses and perceptions evolved to evade tigers and catch food, not to understand the properties of photons and subatomic particles. Despite more than 100 years of effort by the world’s leading physicists and philosophers, the quantum realm remains incomprehensibly bizarre. The fact that we cannot comprehend it is a form of environmental mismatch.

We may face a similar type of conceptual difficulty in grappling with a pandemic. Our brains may not be naturally suited to dealing with problems of this scale or nature. Even our language, our concepts, are inapt tools, artifacts of our previous reality.

From a good discussion of current events by Charles Yu in The Atlantic.

Stare into the void

More experiments with abstract procedural art generation using MSG (modular synthesized graphics) in Studio Artist 5. Worked in the Evolution Editor to get to this point.

Cleansing the Palette

Thought i'd take a break on the kind of intense current events artwork for a second and generate some procedural art imagery. I started with a Cellular Automata MSG preset and then started working with swap mutations in the Evolution Editor.

A Quiet MSG Meditation

One of the nice things about the new MSG features is that you have more control over the number of colors in a color palette. Dialing them down can be useful to lead to less frenetic color mappings. Trying to spend some time this week improving and cleaning up a few MSG features.

Roll of the Ocean

Interesting procedural abstract paint preset that dropped out of some 'surprise me' gallery show testing.

Drip

A screen capture from one of the more recent nightly gallery show experiments. We were watching True Detective while it was being made, so maybe some of that creepiness bleed into the imagery being generated at the time.

The actual image was created via a free-running generative process. Where the output of one gallery show cycle is auto-loaded into the source area are to be used as the source for the next cycle of gallery show processing. The initial seed image manually placed in the canvas to start things off with some kind of real world source image was a random choice from a folder of old jazz poster art imagery i've been extensively playing with recently.

The gallery show technique used was mutate factory paint. I did have mutated auto-masking turned on, as well as random compositing of the gallery show output into the canvas, and random generation of source color palettes and color memories. And i was using a folder of wet wash paint presets for the start cycle processing. You can select # of repeats for start and end cycle processing now, so i used 2 repeats. This means a random preset from the start cycle favorites folder is chosen and applied to the canvas, then that same sequence of random steps is applied a second time. This happens before the main gallery show technique processing occurs in each gallery show cycle.

I kind of liked the abstract qualities of this particular image taken from the overall gallery show sequence. It's pretty far into the gallery show cycles, so the original source image has long since been abstracted into something radically different that could really be considered procedural in nature by this point in the overall process.

It reminded me of something like old graffiti paint on a warehouse wall in some narrow urban alley that had been washed away by rain or urban decay. So i guess it reminds me of my old south of market haunting grounds in San Francisco in some way. A soft side to the hard city. It was always there right in front of you in the textures of the intensely urban environment if you were willing to just open you eyes to see it.

Note to self, I guess i should consider adding mutation options for the start and end cycle gallery show processing as well. Maybe i can drop that in tomorrow morning as a new feature.

A Day in the Park

Trying out some really interesting new gallery show features. I'm using the new procedural MSG source option along with a mutate factor paint gallery show technique. So each source image that gallery show paints using mutated paint presets is live generated using a randomly mutated MSG preset. As opposed to working with a folder of images.

Some people apparently have issues with what they perceive to be the karaoke aspect of repainting a source image. But this is an example of a completely generative process for generating a digital painting, where both the 'source' being painted as well as the 'paint technique' are both being derived generatively in real time during a gallery show cycle.

As i often do, i don't turn on any settings that erase the previous gallery show canvas, so you can get interesting build up effects that occur over the course of several different gallery show cycles.

Mechanical

I guess this could be considered another symmetry experiment. It's interesting how often that creeps into design. Maybe because the brain is so good at detecting it.

Kind of a cold, mechanical procedural art style. Like everything on this blog, it was generated using Studio Artist. Specifically MSG processors for this particular image.

Foldover

MSG study in geometric mapping.

Color Quad Block 3

More experiments with the new color quad block MSG processors. I seem to always get the best results when using the tiling processors if i fix the repeat ratios for the different overlays.