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."

Comments

finally

[John Pfeiffer]

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

Re:Photo

[Frambooz]

Try Corel Painter. Unsurpassed natural media painting program... lots of great Photoshop & Painter graphics here. Painter supports brush plugins, I wonder if MoXi will be released as one...

obligatory Soviet Russia

[Krankheit]

In Soviet Russia the computer prints with paint brushes and artists print laser printers, wait a second...

Re:Photo

[Frambooz]

Almost forgot Artrage, a free natural media painting program for Windows and Mac OS X. Definately worth a look.

Roland Piquepaille Watch Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

What's Next...?

[__aaclcg7560]

Won't be long before we can start learning pottery on the computer. Nothing like a good virtual clay pot. :P

...any bets?

[erroneus]

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.

Re:ads

[nmoog]

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...

Patent Issues?

[buckhead_buddy]

Fractal Design's Expression and Painter were touted as a revolutionary technologies that would allow a skilled artist to imitate the texture of the surface, the tool applying, and the virtual media being applied. Though I never saw their patents, these things were touted as having been patented and that it would give an artist the feel of a caligraphy brush or the interactivity of oil paints.

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.

Re:Patent Issues?

[sankyuu]

Besides Fractal Design, there are a whole lot of other patents which they'll have to dodge such as " 6,906,70 Electronic module for sensing pen motion" (Microsoft 2001), " 6,801,211 Computer painting system with passive paint brush stylus" (Forsline et al 2001), " Brush stroke palette feedback method for automatic digital \"painting\" effects" ( Silverbrook 1998), "5,432,896 Watercolor simulation in computer graphics " (AXA 1991), and "5,155,813 Computer apparatus for brush styled writing" (Wang Labs 1991).

Input devices and lots of other hardware projects are a pain to produce independently because of all these patents. So despite the low cost of actual materials (transducers, chips, etc), it's hard to start a small, creative hardware business because of licensing costs and other legal overhead.

Re:ads

[JanneM]

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.

Input Devices

[Sideswiped]

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.

Re:Input Devices

[sakusha]

There's the core issue. Big bucks were spent on researching and emulating an effect that can be done for pennies with real ink, paper, and a brush. Some things do not need to be simulated, they are so cheap and easy to do in the original media. The best input for brushwork is ink and paper, and a scanner. People often ask me how I get my brushwork effects in my computer graphics, I tell them I do brushwork with a real brush.

Re:It must be your feet....

[The_Wilschon]

what really amuses me is that rpiquepa (which sounds like the name of a pokemon IMO) has 94 freaks, and only 7 fans... a much hated man.

OTOH, prostoalex has 31 fans, and only 1 freak... Sounds like someone needs to take lessons. :-p

Full Article Text (htmlized, coralized)

[Anonymous Coward]

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. Read more...

Here is some general information about MoXi provided by Technology Research News.

The software models the gritty details of paper absorbing water and pigment moving through water, including the way pigment concentrates at ink boundaries as water evaporates from drying ink. The technique promises to make computer paint programs with more realistic and could also be used in computer animation packages, according to the researchers.

The simulation is based on mathematics -- the lattice Boltzmann equation -- that physicists use to model the complex behaviors of fluids. The model simulates more complex effects than previous work, and is also fast enough to deliver ink dispersion simulations in real-time on a reasonably large canvas, according to the researchers.

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)

[Link to image in article]

[Link to image in article]

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.

Our paint system, MoXi, allows users to paint in the spontaneous style of Eastern ink painting, on a computer. The simulations of both brush and ink are essential for a successful extension of this traditional art into the digital domain. For real-time performance, we have implemented our ink flow model entirely on the GPU, leaving the CPU for the brush simulation.

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.

Cassidy Curtis's CG watercolors

[bleppie]

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/

My nomination for today's stupidest quote:

[kongjie]

"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".

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."

You're looking for Painter, not Expression

[Animaether]

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.

Ew

[Hikaru79]

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...

If this doesn't sound like...

[FFFish]

Corel Natural Painter. It, too, simulates individual bristles, ink flow, pressure and angle, etcetera.

Re:ads

[sinner0423]

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.

Interesting, but not new

[Dire Bonobo]

While interesting and pretty, this is not exactly cutting-edge research; the techniques for paint-and-water diffusion were laid out by Cassidy Curtis and his co-authors in 1997 (link), and instrumented haptic brushes with underlying simulated-brush models were examined in 2001 (brush models instrumented brush (pdf).

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.)

Prior art

[Sparohok]

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