Today’s post will look at how to generate dynamic paint effects using the Particle Pen Mode in the paint synthesizer. You can use this kind of dynamic painting to very quickly build interesting abstract painted imagery with a tremendous amount of internal detail. Or you can use movie stream output to create dynamic paint animation movie files.
The key to generating the particular style of dynamic paint effects discussed in today’s post is the paint synthesizer’s Particle Pen Mode, which paints with a set of dynamic real time paint particles. The Pen Mode is set in the Editor control panel called Pen Mode (as shown below). The particular paint preset we are working with today is available in the Assisted or Auto : Magic Spiros category and is called A MagicSpiral 07b, which has many different examples of dynamic particle pen based paint effects.
All of the different Studio Artist pen modes provide different ways of using the paint synthesizer to paint. So by changing the Pen Mode for a particular paint preset you can dramatically change the way it interactively or automatically paints. The Interactive Pen Mode works like a conventional paint tool, dynamically building a single paint stroke as you move the pen cursor while manually painting. So there is no auto-painting going on behind the scenes when you manually paint with Interactive Pen Mode.
Particle Pen Mode dynamically paints with a set of individual paint particles. So it’s like having multiple automatic paint brushes that are emitted from your pen cursor as you manually paint. Even though you may be working manually with the pen cursor, Particle Pen Mode dynamically paints with a stream of auto-painting particles emitted from the tip of the manually controlled pen cursor.
The distinction between Interactive Pen Mode and Particle Pen Mode can also be observed when performing automatic painting initiated by pressing the Action button. Interactive Pen Mode will progressively paint in one automatically individual paint stroke at a time. Particle Pen Mode dynamically paints in multiple interleaved paint strokes at the same time.
There’s a specific paint synthesizer control panel associated with Particle Pen Mode (2nd gallery image above). In it you can specify things like the # Particles, optional swarming and path jumping behavior, how individual particles can be used to modulate other paint synthesizer parameters, and additional extra forces influencing the individual particle’s movement over time.
The main force controlling individual particle movement over time is the automatic path generation capabilities of the paint synthesizer. So the Path Shape, Path Angle, Path End, Path Application, and Path Randomization parameters are going to act together to generate the initial movement of individual particles over time. Any additional swarming, path jumping, or extra force interactions are added on to the initial particle movement generated by the paint synthesizer automatic paint generator, whose behavior is determined by the Path control panels we just mentioned.
For the particular paint preset we are working with today, the Path Shape control panel (shown in the 3rd gallery image above) is working to build the dynamic particle paint movement generated by this preset. If you look at the Path Shape control panel, you can see that the Path Shape is set to the Spiral 1 option. And the Max Path Length is set to 3000. So the spiral movement of the smaller generated paint circles is coming from these settings.
The smaller circles are actually being generated by the settings in the Brush Type control panel ( 4th gallery image above). The Brush Type parameter is set to AntiAliased Solid, with a Sphere option for the Vector Type parameter. Note that the Poly Opt is set to Outline-No Fill, so only the outline edge of the vector sphere is actually drawn (no interior sphere fill is generated). So the circles you see drawn are actually the anti-aliased vector outlines of vector spheres paint nibs (the circle is the paint nib, not an auto-generated painted in path).
You can watch the dynamic real time paint behavior of this particle pen preset in a paint animation movie available for viewing here. The first half of the animation shows off the Action painting behavior of the preset. The second half of the animation shows off manual drawing, starting with holding the pen cursor stationary in the center of the canvas, and then moving it around a little. Note the 2 different kinds of dynamic particle paint movement generated by this preset in the 2 halves of the animation (action vs manual drawing behavior).
Particle Pen Mode and the AntiAliased Solid Brush Type can interact in very complex ways for some Vector Type options. For example, changing the Vector Type from Sphere to Spline will generate a very different kind of dynamic painting behavior. Rather than a series of paint nib circles being generated at each individual particle position, a series of spline curves will be generated that move between the different particle positions, creating a large abstract dynamically changing painted shape.
The 2 image examples above show off a Spline Vector Type for this paint preset, with the Particle Track control Off and then On for the 2 gallery images. Note that both of these images look dramatically different than the manual dynamic paint behavior of the original paint preset (circles moving outwards in a spiral patterning).
Particle Track Off means that one spline curve is generated that moves between the positions of the different individual paint particles. Particle Track On means that the generated vector spline curves are tracking the movement of the individual particles (each particle has it’s own evolving spline curve). You can see the difference between the 2 styles of vector particle pen drawing in the 2 examples above.
We’ve barely scratched the surface in this post of the different dynamic painting styles you can achieve working with particle pen mode in the paint synthesizer.
