The screen shot above shows an example of 3 different instances of a movie brush playing back in real time in the Studio Artist canvas. I’m using the movie brush paint preset we built yesterday, with one slight editing modification that will be described below. The edit allows me to interactively define and move around multiple live drawing pen tracking positions in realtime, in this example allowing for 3 different live movie brushes to be playing simultaneously in the canvas.
The paint synthesizer preset used in today’s post is identical to the one we explained how to build yesterday, with one exception. I switched the Path Start control panel Generator parameter setting from Pen Position Live Track to Pen Postion Live Track MP.
The MP stands for Multi Position. The Pen Postion Live Track MP path start Generator was added at the specific request of some Studio Artist users who are pioneering the use of the paint synthesizer for live performance. What they wanted was the ability to interactively specify one or more live paint positions, where in their words ‘paint would continuously spew out from the multiple positions until they were manually adjusted or repositioned at some later time’.
Remember, the Pen Position Live Track path start Generator continuously generates a series of path start points based on the last Wacom pen position detected while the pen was in proximity to the tablet surface. Pen proximity means that the pen is hovering over the tablet surface (or touching it).
But the normal way the paint synthesizer works is that a mouse click or pen press on the tablet stops any automatic Action drawing, and switches immediately into a manually drawn paint stroke. This make sense, because it’s the kind of behavior you would expect from a conventional digital paint program. But pen proximity is very powerful, because you can specify and adjust a position on the canvas by hovering the pen without instigating a mouse click or pen press event.
And by lifting the pen out of proximity and then back into proximity again, you can define the positioning of multiple pen tracking points. Working with a combination of key presses in conjunction with moving the pen in and out of proximity allows for interactively adding multiple live pen tracking positions, or moving existing ones in real time, while Auto-painting instigated by the Action button is taking place. Using the Pen Postion Live Track MP path start Generator is the key to working with this live performance feature for specifying and then moving around multiple paint ‘spew’ points in real time as the paint synthesizer auto-draws.
Working with Live Multi-Point Pen Tracking
Again, we’re using yesterday’s simple movie brush paint preset, modified to use the Pen Postion Live Track MP path start Generator as shown above. When I press the Action button the movie brush will start playing live at the last cursor position used on the canvas. If I move the Wacom pen into proximity of the tablet, I can then move the position of the single live playing movie brush paint nib. If I then lift the pen out of tablet proximity, the movie brush will continue to play live at it’s current position.
If I then bring the pen back into proximity of the tablet, the live playing movie brush paint nib will jump to the new pen location. Again, remember that i’m not actually pressing the pen into the tablet, i’m just hovering it above the tablet close to the surface to bring it into proximity. If I press the pen into the tablet, then I will activate a mouse click event and drop out of Action painting into a manual paint stroke.
By holding down the shift key when I bring the pen back into proximity of the tablet, instead of moving the existing live pen track position I will start a new additional live pen tracking position. So now I would have 2 live playing movie brush paint nibs located at different pen tracking locations on the canvas. Moving the pen within proximity will adjust this new second live pen tracking position, while leaving the first live pen tracking position untouched.
If I lift the pen out of proximity and then back into proximity again I will switch from controlling the second live pen tracking position back to controlling the first live pen tracking position. As long as I don’t hold down the shift key when bringing the pen back into proximity, I will switch to adjusting the position of the next live pen tracking position. Holding down the shift key when bringing the pen back into proximity adds a new live pen tracking position.
The screen shot at the very top of the post shows how I interactively added 3 live pen tracking positions by working with moving the pen in and out of tablet proximity in conjunction with using or not using the shift key. So I have 3 movie brushes playing live in real time in different locations on the canvas. I can change the positions of the live playing movie brush paint nibs one by one (by moving the pen out of proximity and then back in again to move to the next live pen tracking position). And I can add additional live pen tracking positions by holding down the shift key when the pen comes into tablet proximity.
This link to a canvas screen shot movie shows how I worked with the Pen Postion Live Track MP path start Generator in real time to build up 3 different moveable paint ‘spew’ points, each playing a live movie in their moveable paint nib position. Because i’m using 1D frame indexing for my movie source brush, each paint nib is playing back the same movie loop. But I could embed several movie loops of the same size into a different movie brush, and then use 2D frame indexing to have multiple live movies playing simultaneously at my different live pen track positions.
I can also use the concept of working with multiple interactively adjustable live pen tracking positions in conjunction with DualMode Paint operation mode or by using additional paint synthesizer features like Image Processing Paint Brush Load or Auto-Region as Brush to create more sophisticated effects than the simple play a movie brush back live in the paint nib examples we’ve been workign with here.
Here’s a tip that discusses some more live performance features available in Studio Artist.
