Stream Brush

Description

This brush is for animating all types of moving liquids and gases, such as waterfalls, geysers, steam as well as lava flows and fire. Virtually any kind of flow can be brought to life with the Stream Brush.

How to use Stream Brush

1. Select Stream Brush from the “Add New Animation” dialog. The brush is located under the “Animated Brushes” section in the “Nature Brushes” subsection.

2. Click “Apply Selected Animation”. This adds Stream Brush to the list of Animations as shown below:

3. Now, paint with the brush over the areas you want to make animated, for example a waterfall, a creek, a fountain and so on. You don’t have to be pixel-precise. Simply mark the part of the image that should be moving.

Note that all areas on the image that you mark with Stream Brush (even if they do not connect) are a part of the same animation. So, for example, if you want the stream to go down first, then to the right, or if you want different parameters of each Stream Brush area, you should use multiple animations to do that.

Brush Properties

Stream Brush properties are split onto two tabs: Basic and Splashes. Let’s take a closer look at the settings on these tabs.

Basic

  • Direction - sets where the stream should flow. Do you want a waterfall that falls up? Easy!
  • Speed - determines the speed of the stream. Examples of fast streams are creeks, fountains, mountain rivers and waterfalls. Examples of slow streams are calm rivers, water flowing from faucets, lava streams, and so on. Also note that distant objects look as if they move more slowly than they really do. So, when animating distant waterfalls or rivers, use lower Speed values.
  • Amplitude - sets the height of the ripple waves on the surface of the stream. Bigger waves are a feature of strong and dynamic streams: whitewaters, small vivid springs and such.
  • Scale - this parameter sets the level of detail for ripples in the stream. Again, for distant animated objects use lower values because details are lost when we look at them from a distance. For close objects, increase this parameter.

Splashes

The Stream Brush animates a picture by creating moving splashes along the flow. Here you can adjust the look and the behavior of the splash waves.

  • Density - select the number of additional layers of splashes applied to the same picture. More layers make the stream more dense because each new layer is put over all the previous layers.
  • Run distance - this parameter determines the length of each splash wave. Short waves are suitable for smaller or distant streams, as well as fountains. Longer waves look best in close-shot streams (for example, a faucet or a shower), and calm and slow streams.
  • Translucency - Translucency sets how transparent the splashes are. Higher values mean the background is more visible and the animation is less visible.
  • Base color - this parameter tells DP Animation Maker, which colors of the background picture it should animate. On the marked area, only pixels of the same and similar colors will be used to generate the flow of running splashes
  • Sensitivity - the Base color option (see above) is used to determine which pixels on the image should be animated. The Sensitivity, on the other hand, specifies how sensitive the program is to the Base color. Wider range means more similar colors are involved in the animation.