So Studio Artist V5.5 has reached that nebulous stage in the development of a software product where the code is frozen, it's the final build. No code changes for the Studio Artist V5.5 release.
So just packaging and distribution issues to finish up. Bear with us during that hopefully brief period.
Is it finished?
No software product is ever finished.
Can you get things done with it?
Absolutely. I have 1000s of amazing visual images generated using just the generative strategy features of gallery show. Stuff i generated during what were essentially automated stress test runs (as opposed to more focused artistic driven sessions). With not very much thought or effort put into putting together accompanying folders of presets specifically designed to enhance a particular generative art strategy.
Manually manipulating the program is of course a whole other universe filled with endless exotic destinations to explore. Lot's of new features hidden away in the depths of the various Editor control panels.
Is it finished?
Absolutely not. But we have reached the point where we need to get the 5.5.0 version defined, and thereby exit code lockdown, so that we can bang out a few fixes for issues that came up during our stress testing regime.
So we anticipate a fairly quick turn around on an incremental 5.5.1 update, that will be released when it's finished.
When will that be released?
Ha, ha. Like i said, we anticipate a quick turn around, but that's the best i can tell you at this point in time.
We want to do a clean sweep of the issues we're aware of. We'll try to make you aware of them as well, to aid you in the use of the 5.5.0 build until the 5.5.1 build is available.
Some of these issues are really apple curve balls (they do like to throw them at their customers and developers). And in some sense, i really feel like they are introduced because apple is trying to make the mac act like an information appliance (iphone, ipad) rather than an actual computer.
Issues like arbitrarily restricting access to the file system. Like it's some dirty place you aren't supposed to go. As opposed to being a great way to hierarchically organize information. Where both the program and the user can interact with that structure and it's contents. One would hope easily, without undo restriction.
Like movie brush paint or dual paint or PASeq preset that reference a movie file inside of the Brush folder we ship inside of the StudioArtist folder in Applications as not being openable to the StudioArtist application, even though the exact same movie files work fine in the preset file if you put them some other place in the file system and then edit the preset to reference the new location. On some of the mac systems we support, not all (of course).
For some strange (aesthetic?) reason (why exactly?), apple decided to not put the standard file dialog titles up in the title area of the standard file dialogs. Just for external application developers using the pre-defined interface to those standard file dialogs, but apparently not for internally developed applications. Reminds me of how they put the plug to charge their trackpad mouse on the bottom so no one could use it while it was charging (but it sure looked nice that way i guess?).
We can either move to non-standard file dialogs (which would solve the issue today but at the cost of a change to the normal visual appearance), or wait and hope the issue goes away when we move to our next internal framework.
Of course non of these apple curve ball issues are a problem for windows users of Studio Artist V5.5 on windows.
Other outstanding issues are associated with features that need to be finished (or turned back on).
Live Video background textures are currently turned off (did you even know they existed?). In conjunction with this, you can grab a live video source manually, but the live preview then capture option is turned off as well.
Like Temporal Generator (TG) functionality in MSG Brush Load and MSG Live Source Brush. We turned it off to aid us in tracking down a wild MSG bug in a pretty obscure place that was probably never visited in the age of manual parameter editing of Studio Artist effects. There are also a few lingering turned off msg source color palette features in those control panels.
But the generative strategy algorithms in V5.5 automatically edit the application's internal editable effect parameters in ways you could only dream about doing manually in previous versions of Studio Artist. So you do end up visiting those back water corners of the editable parameter space (and believe me there are some seriously wild ones).
So super obscure bugs no one ever ran into suddenly pop up into view. And we've been tracking all of these down. As they come to light. I think there are a few still waiting to be found, so we're continuing our automated hunt.
The Load Style features need to be finished up. The ones we envisioned for V5.5. You can extrapolate away about where that particular feature is headed in the future. It's an amazing journey we are all going to take over the next year.
So there are a few specific things we want to finish up or turn on associated with Load Style. Like folders of images as an alternative to a single image for your Style.
The Style Palettize option in the sub menu of options when in the Palette tab of the source area is not doing what you would expect it to do. So we'll fix that.
Here's how to get there quickly manually. You can use Edit : Palette " Generate from : Style Image menu command to generate the source color palette from the currently loaded style image. Then you use the Palettize sub menu option in Source Area.
Style texture visual attribute modulation in the paint synthesizer is defaulting to style luminance right now. That will be turned on. We may also open up some more style visual attribute modulation features throughout the program. Look for the hidden ones already existing in Ip Ops.
The empty PT tab option in the Preset Browser is basically a place marker for currently turned off features of the new PowerTool Bar. Turned off features that have to do with letting you access presets inside of the PowerTool Bar.
The optical flow features need some work. We definitely want to make this area really shine.
The PASeq preset file format version id needs to be bumped up a notch to catch some late arriving features in Transition Contexts.
There are some outstanding PASeq playback issues for the 2 new pen modes in the paint synthesizer.
Things like the paint Synthesizer and Vectorizer Smart Edit commands need to be expanded. You can never have enough, but algorithmically manipulating the style modulation is going to be really important.
As far as lingering bugs, i think there is still something hiding inside of PASeq playback during PASeq based gallery show runs using the Factory PASeq presets. There is some concern that there may be old presets inside of there generated during development times when the version ids were changing quickly, (and perhaps got our of synch?), thereby causing havoc when they are read in. We're actively working through it to make those go away.
So theres a quick overview of the kind of stuff we want to shine up for the upcoming V5.5.1 update release.
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