Using Paint Synth Macro Edits to Quickly Make Pouring Paint Wet

In yesterday’s post we discussed how to build a simulation of pouring paint, based on hand editing an older Wacom pen tilt sensitive air brush preset. In that post, we mentioned that you could do additional hand editing in the paint synthesizer to build various kinds of wet paint effects to add additional complexity into appearance of the pouring paint.

One quick way to do this kind of edit is to take advantage of the Paint Synthesizer Macro Edits. There are 2 different macro edit commands available in the help browser that can be used to automatically build wet paint effects with the push of a button.

The first 2 gallery images below are screen shots of the built in Studio Artist 4 Help Browser. The first shows the cursor clicking on the PaintSynth MacroEdits link on the main Home help page. The second shows the 2 Make Paint Wet 1 and Make Paint Wet 2 macro edit command links. Pressing the blue arrow at the left side of any of the macro edit commands runs the associated macro edit command. Note that there’s also a Turn Off Wet Paint macro edit command to get rid of a wet paint effect.

MacroEdit commands are intelligent high level paint synthesizer editing commands. So when you press something like the Make Paint Wet 1 macro edit command, it internally adjusts multiple paint synthesizer parameters to add the associated macro edit changes to the current paint synthesizer preset.

There are multiple approaches you can use to build various kinds of wet paint effects in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer. The Make Paint Wet 1 macro edit command sets up a Dual Fill algorithm automatically for you (one of the many different approaches to building wet paint effects).

The first 2 control panels below show off the original Paint Fill Apply and Paint Source Offset control panel settings from yesterday’s pouring paint preset.

The 3rd and 4th gallery images above show off the Paint Fill Apply and Paint Source Offset control panel settings after pressing the Make Paint Wet 1 macro edit command. Note that multiple parameters have been adjusted to setup a intelligent fixed Paint Source Offset that dynamically tracks the previous path positioning while you are painting a paint path (so it’s tracking a close previous location on the current ongoing paint path where you have already painted). The Paint Fill Apply control panel has been setup to use a Dual Fill Fill Algorithm, specificially the Mix Apply / Brush Displace setting.

All of the Fill Algorithm parameter options in the Paint Fill Apply control panel that start with Mix in their names are Dual Fill algorithms. Dual Fill means that they combine together 2 different kinds of fill algorithms. The first fill algorithm lays down new paint, while the second fill algorithm specifies some kind of fill process that spreads or re-processes the existing canvas paint in some way. The re-processing of the existing previous painted canvas paint path positioning as you move the pen is what generates the wet paint effect.

You can manually try different Dual Fill options that start with Mix in their name to get a feel for what they do. The Alg2 Mix Ratio 2-1 parameter lets you set the ratio of paint nibs using the 2nd fill algorithm vs the first fill algorithm. So a Alg2 Mix Ratio 2-1 parameter setting of 4 means that 4 paint nibs are laid down using fill algorithm 2 for each paint nib laid down using fill algorithm 1.

There are also additional Alg2 Composite and Alg2 Blend% parameters for the second fill algorithm. Again, by working with these you can create all kinds of different wet paint effects (as well as all kinds of additional paint aesthetics).

You could manually setup all of the different controls required to get a Dual Fill wet algorithm going, by hand editing them one at a time in the paint synthesizer. The Make Paint Wet 1 macro edit command does all of this for you with a single command link button press.

There are all kinds of different macro edit commands available for quickly high level editing the paint synthesizer. Working with them while playing with a dynamic active-assisted paint preset like yesterday’s pouring paint preset is a fun way to quickly build new paint effects. The Make Paint Self Similarity Mixer macro edit is a fun one to try out with something like our tilt orientation sensitive pouring paint preset.

The best way to get a sense for what the different paint synthesizer macro edit commands do is to try them out and see how they affect different paint preset. If you want to understand what they are doing internally, you can look at the control panels int he paint synthesizer before and after running any given macro edit command to get a feel for what internal parameters are being adjusted to build the overall macro-edit effect.

Category: Painting and Paint Synthesizer

Using Paint Synth Macro Edits to Quickly Make Pouring Paint Wet

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