Slashdot Mirror
Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer
Roland Piquepaille writes "Traditional Oriental ink painting is more easily done with real brushes than with a computer program because you need to model how the ink is flowing into an absorbent surface such as paper. In this brief article, Technology Research News writes that "researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have developed a brush-and-ink-style paint program, dubbed MoXi, that uses a model of pigment particles in water flowing into paper." These virtual Chinese brushes simulate in real time the ink dispersion and could be available on your PC within two years. This longer overview contains more details and references. It also includes pictures generated with MoXi. Finally, it looks at a potential trademark problem over the name MoXi."
What the hell? I can paint just fine with photoshop, thank you.
I've been looking for something to more completely emulate the look of Japanese sumi painting, I bet this'd do a damn fine job. :D
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
In Soviet Russia the computer prints with paint brushes and artists print laser printers, wait a second...
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
And once again, /. publishes a story by Roland Piquepaille which points to his own blog (generating Blogads revenue for him, of course).
Is there any Slashdotter with a number of accepted submissions that comes close to Roland's??
I smell something fishy going on here...
Won't be long before we can start learning pottery on the computer. Nothing like a good virtual clay pot. :P
Any bets on how long it will take before this is emulated in a Photoshop or (hopefully) GiMP plugin? While I appreciate the achievment this represents, it's far from earth-shattering.
Still, the other part of the prize is the user interface. After all, the pressure of the brush plays an important role in all of that. I have seen programs where the speed of the brush movement helps to simulate the pressure of the brush but it's not natural enough.
I hope the need is important enough to justify the work done in this case.
Atleast its better than his "brain-not-like-computers" story from a couple of days ago.
Ill advertise this cool greasemonkey script again for those who always feel dirty after they land on primidi.com : De-Piquepaille Slashdot
How about a passive-agressive protest, where this script is extended to not only ignore the story, but automatically post an "I've boycotted this Roland Piquepaille advert"
Sorry, no, thats being a tad stupid. Its just been SUCH a boring news day...
Of course, Microsoft now owns what's left of Fractal Design Expression. Their recent beta release indicates that they intend to release it to the public again, but they don't appear to know what to do with it other than try and imitate photoshop. The file extension even remains the same .xpr But of course we all know that Microsoft is very open to competition and will only use its patent portfolio as a last resort to compete with others. ;-)
Personally, I was generally more impressed with Fractal Designs technology than I ever was with their apps. They had frustrating user interfaces that made it difficult to use unless you had a pressure sensitive tablet and a very fast machine. I certainly hope the MoXi makers succeed (we can always use good graphics tools) but I see some difficulties if their goal is really in marketing this tech just as a ultra-cool paint program.
prostoalex leads the /. hall of fame.
Why not just filter out the ads and go to the site?
And if he really does do a good writeup, then more power to him.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I'm very excited to see the simulation of pigment on paper. I just hope that headway can be made on input devices. Wacom tablets are a nice start. Though the slickness of Wacom tablets can be a challenge to get used to. You can lay a sheet of paper over the tablet to add some resistance, but then the nib of the pen wear outs quickly.
Something in a the form of a force feedback pen would be amazing. One that you could set the resistance and the smooth/roughness of the surface you wish to emulate. If one already exists I would love to get some info.
Archive.org has a great video on a "physically-based, deformable, 3D" virtual brush developed by the University of North Carolina that allows artists to paint as naturally on a computer as they would on a canvas.
I thought its been a part of Photoshop since version 6, IIRC? Here is just a quote from a SAM's PHOTOSHOP guide on the Sumi-e filter. There is also a filter in GIMP. My camcorder also had a Sumi-e filter built into it, but it tends to smear the image too much resulting in loss of texture quality and improved image compression storage.
without prejudice
Don't know in what world you're living, but I highly doubt an article posted on /. frontpage equals 500 dollars of Adsense revenue. I should know, I had many.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
There's some guy named "Roland de Pipuequaville" or something. I can't spell his name. Apparently the slashdot editors have been linking his website a lot for some months. There's this bizarrely large clique of users who are so absolutely blinded with hate and envy as a result that they apparently just absolutely can't stand to talk about anything else.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Here is some general information about MoXi provided by Technology Research News.
Below are two images generated with MoXi, the first one being called "Lotus leaves" and the second one "Planet" (Credit: Hong Kong University of Science & Technology)
Here are two links to larger versions of these images, the "Lotus leaves" (1.30 MB) and the "Planet" (1.47 MB).
The researchers behind the MoXi project are Chiew-Lan Tai, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and Nelson Siu-Hang Chu, her Research Assistant.
For more information about their projects, you can read these two pages about the Virtual Chinese Brush and about MoXi. On this page, you'll have access to several videos and images. The two pictures above come from this page.
The MoXi project will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2005 under the name "MoXi: Real-Time Ink Dispersion in Absorbent Paper." Here is a link to the paper submitted by the researchers (PDF format, 1 page, 145 KB). Here are an excerpt from the introduction.
According to the researchers, this technique "could be used practically in one or two years." But is this possible that this technology can be sold under the name MoXi? There already is a Digeo service named Moxi which offers High Definition TV (HDTV). And Digeo claims in its press releases (check this one for example) that Moxi is one of its registered trademarks.
We feel your pain.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I don't think theres any trademark issues to be had with a softdrink company, but lawsuits have been had over less. I'd rather have this new Moxi anyway.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
A firewall of course!
Sounds similar to the work Cassidy Curtis and folks at UW did on computer-generated watercolors using models of fluid flow: http://www.otherthings.com/uw/watercolor/
Dude, this article is supposed to be about the crazy technology that the Chinese are coming out with, not some problems that people have with the person who submitted the article. You should have your own blogs to post about your problems with the posters. I'm trying to be non-partisan, leave whining (both sides) to your own websites, don't clutter Slashdot.
Uh, duh, so are you saying that now that someone has come up with a solution, we won't have to use messy brushes and ink anymore?
I think what you're trying to say is that previously computer programs have had problems modelling the physics of "ink painting," and now someone has come up with a better mathematical model.
"Easy" is not the operative word here--"realistic" is.
By the way, if you're going to host a technology review site, why don't you enter the 21st century and stop calling it "Oriental"? Traditional Chinese painting is one thing, Japan has more than one style of ink painting and then there's Korea, etc. etc. People "in the know" call the area "East Asia."
Just to amend your post a little...
Fractal Design's Painter and Expression were later marketed under the MetaCreations brand. They dissolved and put their products up for sale.
Expression was bought up by Creature House, which Microsoft bought.
Painter, however, was bought up by Corel; http://www.corel.com/painterix/home/index.html
Painter has the tech that's much more like what's being referred to in the article.
Expression is much more a vector brush strokes/etc. thingy which is quite cool.. and v3 is available from MS for free.
And please quite perpetuating that Expression is trying to 'be like Photoshop'. It's not. It's an entirely different piece of software.
That's what the mod system is for. He's already modded 0, so there's nobody here but the people who care.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Hm... personally, although the concept sounds absolutely *great* to me, the screenshots released so far are nothing to drool over, if you actually look at the article (and sell your soul to Roland). Download the high-res Lotus Leaves and take a look at the edges of those ink blots. No *way* that real ink would leave so clear and crisp an edge on absorbant, realistic paper as you can see there.
I realize that this is two years away from a release, but I really hope they introduce some major changes into their algorithm there, because so far they are not even competing for realism with products currently on the market...
...listed as an employee has my attention. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Corel Natural Painter. It, too, simulates individual bristles, ink flow, pressure and angle, etcetera.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
There is a freely available thesis on the simulation of Chinese brushes titled The Parametric Hairy Brush.
There's some guy named "Roland de Pipuequaville" or something. I can't spell his name. Apparently the slashdot editors have been linking his website a lot for some months. There's this bizarrely large clique of users who are so absolutely blinded with hate and envy as a result that they apparently just absolutely can't stand to talk about anything else.
Thats a great explanation, except for no. People do not like Roland for the following reasons :
A) his website
B) his website
C) his website
Check the article he submitted.. particularly, the "This longer overview" link. Guess where it goes? Why, his own website/blog chock full of hit ads, ads, and even more ads to generate "hit" revenue from slashdot. You even going to his site just made that douchebag some money, and the guy is capitalizing off of submitting stories to slashdot.
What if you ran a small news site that came up with a steady stream of stories, and some guy plagerises 100% of it, mirrors it on his own site and collects all of the advertisement revenue that supposed to keep YOUR site alive? Wouldn't you be a little pissed off? Yeah, I would too. Welcome to what he's been doing on slashdot for quite some time.
Get your facts straight before you come to these conclusions about all the "roland haters", k? Thanks.
I recently began studying the Chinese language, for practical purposes and for the insight into a language based on logograms. I was especially interested in the calligraphy of the language. Maybe this sort of technology will allow me to experiment with this.
Now here's a De-Piquepaille script for everyone to use it happily.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
OK, I know I shouldn't have to say this, but if the majority of people here would just block Roland's website, he wouldn't get many hits on his website. Just add an entry into your HOSTS file, as such:
East of what?
I suspect that's why people have been saying "hey, that seems a lot like [insert drawing program here]" - this is a (somewhat) new twist on old techniques. (Which, of course, is why it's a one-page submission to the conference, rather than a 10-pager like the original "Computer-Generated Watercolor". Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
For character based languages this is everything... The art of the language is about "drawing" the words not just typing them in a word processor.. the characters ARE the art.
There's about two decades of prior work in this field. I've always found the non-photorealistic rendering papers at Siggraph to be particularly interesting and creative. Chinese and Japanese painting are a rich area of study since they are well suited for physical simulation and offer a significant challenge.
The paper that started things off was "Hairy Brushes" by Steve Strassmann at Siggraph '86. I haven't seen this paper in a long time and I can't find it online.
One oft cited work, perhaps the first to look specifically at Japanese painting in computer graphics, is Guo and Kunii, "Modeling the diffuse paintings of 'sumie'", 1991. I can't find a copy of this either.
A more recent paper is "Two Methods for Creating Chinese Painting" by Chan, Akleman and Chen. Available online here. In addition, this paper has a good summary of previous research in the field.
One of my favorites is Barbara Meier, "Painterly Rendering for Animation", from Siggraph '96. It's devoted more to European painting styles but it is a great paper. Found here.
Martin
And here are a few more urls where you can find videos and publications about that work:
here
here
here
and
here
[Disclosure -- I'm the author. That's my dissertation research].
The work Chu and Tan have done to put MoXi together looks very nice. I'll definitely be checking out their paper session at SIGGRAPH.
Correction: I mean "Chu and Tai," of course.
So can you tell Moxie the soda from ink? If you spill it on paper, can you tell it from a Moxi-drawn painting? Does Moxi the software package contain enough caffeine to keep the user awake?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
With the intuous 2 and intuous 3, the pens come with fiber tips that have far more friction with the tablet surface -- much better than the old style although they do gradually wear down.
Incidentally, if you are using an older Wacom, I really recommend the intuous 3. I think they lost their way a bit with the design of the intuous 2 generation, but the 3 brings it all right back home -- small form, incredibly sturdy feel, even _more_ accuracy, far better pen, and the thumb pads on the edges of the tablet are amazingly useful with Painter.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Did anyone else at first read that first word as "Easter" and not "Eastern?" For the life of me I couldn't figure out how I'd get the eggs into my printer.
cp /dev/zero ~/signature.txt
I love pen computing, (see my website, or my posts to places like http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/active.asp ) and while I find a graphics tablet an indispensable tool for doing digital work, and really love doing quick sketches w/ tools like Ambient Design's ArtRage ( http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html ), I simply don't believe that work done in this fashion, even as a ``gicl\'e'' fine art print is going to have the same vitality and glittering appearance as work done by a master.
Microphotography (can't recall the specific magnifications and my book on this is at home) shows that a master's brushwork has the ink particles more evenly dispersed than that of a novice, and w/ practice one can get a far wider, and subtler gradation of colour than the 256 grey values PostScript will allow --- how does one do ``Po'mo'' techiniques where one paints a light area, allows it to dry and then paints in a darker value over it? The result is _quite_ different from immediately painting w/o waiting.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
As much as I prefer working in digital media vs. traditional media it still seems ironic to me that despite thousands of years of painting technology, someone is still trying (and failing) to top a brush developed over 2000 years ago.
I have continually hoped that digital media manages to give the tools required to begin a new digital renaissance of art which manages to shake art to its core the way that 3D perspective did back in the 15th-18th centuries; unfortunately I know enough about art to know that artistic skill is more important than fancy-pants tools any day.
Still, the techniques possible with tools like 3D modeling/texturing/rendering and Corel Painter should open the door to some major mold-breaking. Artists even 20 years ago had no way of painting on a scanned or 3d rendered photograph, then (while paint was still wet?!) drawing on that with dry charcoals & swirling the whole thing together with water-simulations. The number of artistic permutations are now nearly endless.
digital artist, 3D animator, web designer, and otherwise technological creative type....
I also agree about the "Oriental" thing. That words is quite outdated; it has been used to mean pretty much anything in Asia, and lacks specificity; it tends to be used by people who think China, Japan, Korea, etc. all have one culture.
I hate to break the news, but western style oil panting on canvas is just as difficult to do on a computer as eastern ink painting.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Yeah, but the sumi thing in Photoshop sucks. And I'm not talking about the filter, which does nothing like what I'm talking about, I'm talking about being able to paint things and do calligraphy.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*