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

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.

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: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

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/

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.)