The example above is a frame from an animation created using time particles in the Studio Artist paint synthesizer. Each time particle is an instantiation of a MSG preset. The particular preset used in this example is the same IFS chaotic attractor preset used in the previous post on MSG Live Source Brushes. This means that each time particle is a dynamic IFS fractal animating with movement over time.
Time particles give temporal continuity to individual paint strokes in an animation. The path start control settings are used to specify the individual time particle positions for the first frame in the animation. But for subsequent frames the existing set of time particles move spatially based on the adjustable parameters in the 2 time particle control panels.
Time particles are the mechanism you can use to animate multiple instances of a MSG preset in an animation. In this particular animation we used a MSG Live Source Brush. The alternate approach would be to use a MSG Brush Load. Both options allow you to embed a MSG preset within a paint synthesizer preset.
The Paint Action Sequence (PASeq) used to generate the animation is shown below.
The next to last AutoPaint step is the paint synthesizer step that displays the time particles. The other steps in the PASeq were designed to fade and dissipate previous frame images to give a drifting smoke effect with some gravitation pull. The Geodesic Displacement ip op was used to simulate the gravitation pull, and the Geodesic Warp ip op was used to create the dissipation effect. By modifying the previously drawn frame and then overdrawing the time particles on top of it we introduce temporal continuity into the animation, reducing flicker that could occur if we erased to black each frame.
The name of the last PASeq action step is a little misleading. We used the Blur ip op with an Edge 1 composite setting to create an enhancement effect. This boosts the contrast of the rendered frame prior to it being output to a movie file.
By using multiple paint action steps in a PASeq that have different MSG presets embedded in them you could create animations using different kinds of MSG effects working together to create an overall aesthetic.
