BCC Water Color

Category: BCC Art Looks

Effect Name: BCC Water Color

The BCC Water Color filter, part of the BCC Art Looks category, takes input from an image clip and converts this into a water-color stylized animation.

Working with the Filter

Presets and Common Controls

• BCC filters come with a library of factory installed presets plus the ability to create your own custom presets and preview them with the BCC FX Browser™.
• BCC filters also include common controls that configure global effect preferences and other host-specific effect settings.

For more information about working with presets and other common controls, Click Here.

Effect Controls

Mocha Mask and Track

Continuum effects include integrated masking and matte tools that allow you to restrict the effect to specific regions of the image.

• Mocha masks: used to create custom spline masks. Mocha also includes Matte Assist ML and Matte Refine ML, which use machine learning to generate and track masks.
• Pixel Chooser: used to generate geometric shapes, gradients, or mattes based on channel, luma, or color-based selections. Additionally, an AI depth map generator, and an AI-powered face detection model allow for precise control of masks and mattes.

For more information, see Mocha and Pixel Chooser.

Compare Mode

The Compare Mode is used to view the filtered result alongside the original source layer. Several split-screen and side-by-side display options are available.

For more information, see Compare Mode.

• View: Allows you to view the final output or the output of some of the individual steps. Note that setting this to Line Mask can produce some useful textured looks.
  • Output: Normal display; combines the posterized background and the generated lines.
  • Background: Displays only the posterized background image without additional lines.
  • Lines: Displays only the generated lines.
  • Cartoon Matte: Displays only the matte used by the filter for the image posterization.
• Temporal Smoothing: Used to enable the smoothing of the filter result over time.
  • Off: Function is disabled.
  • On: Function is enabled.
  • Lines Only: Temporal smoothing is applied only to the lines and not the composited background.
• Boost Contrast:Increases the overall contrast of the filter result. Higher values increase contrast.
• Soften:Softens / smoothes the image before the lines are drawn.
• Cartoon On:Used to enable or disable the cartoon / contouring effect.
• Cartoon Mix:Blends the cartoon / contour result with the image.
• Cartoon Levels:Controls the amount of image contouring. Lower values generate fewer contours.
• Lines On:Controls whether lines are drawn around the contour / cartoon regions.
• Line Style: Offers 3 options to set the width of the sketched lines:
  • Light Generates thinner sketch lines
  • MediumGenerates medium weight sketch lines
  • Heavy Generates thicker sketch lines
• Line Threshold:Sets the base threshold value for line generation. Boosting this tends to produce a cleaner looking result.
• Line Width:Attenuates the width of the lines.
• Line Soften:Controls the softness of the pencil lead. Higher values generate softer lines.
• Paint Mix:Blends the watercolor paint. High values generate a watercolor paint look; low values generate a more cartoon style look.
• White Boost:Pushes pixel values toward white. Higher values bring more white into the image.

Advanced Group

• Soften Max Deviation:Fine-tuning for the master soften parameter. Increasing the value increases the amount of softening applied to the image.
• Soften Iterations:Applies multiple passes of softening to the image (e.g., 2 applies two passes, 3 applies three passes).

Cartoon Group

• Soften Order: Determines whether the softening controls are applied before or after the cartoon pass:
  • Before Cartoon Softens the image before it is posterized.
  • After Cartoon Softens the image after it is posterized.
  • Both Softens the image both before and after posterization.
• Only Background:If checked, posterize is applied to the background image and does not affect line generation. Lines are based on the smoothed (but not posterized) image.
• Use Matte:Protects large solid areas of color from being affected by the contouring pass.
• Minimum Mix:Blends the contoured image result with the protected image result.
• Matte Threshold:Determines the pixel values included in the protection matte.
• Expand Matte:Spreads the matte outward.
• Harden Matte:Hardens the matte edges.
• Softer Cartoon:Softens the image contouring.

Lines Group

• Intensity:Increases the intensity of edges when rendered into lines.
• Gamma:Increasing gamma makes the lines more prominent.
• Thicken:Makes the lines thicker.
• Blur:Applies a blur filter to the lines.
• Median:Applies a median filter to the lines.
• Contract/Expand:Contracts or expands the width of the lines.
• Invert Lines:Inverts the generated lines. When disabled (default), result is solid colored lines over the background. When enabled, result is a solid color background over image-colored lines.
• Line Color:Sets the line color.
• Opacity:Sets the line opacity.
• Mix With Original:Blends the source and filtered images. Use this parameter to animate the effect from the unfiltered to the filtered image without adjusting other settings, or to reduce the effect of the filter by mixing it with the source image.