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Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer

Posted by timothy on Mon Jul 04, 2005 09:50 PM
from the snatch-the-pebble-from-my-hand dept.
Graphics Software
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."
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  • finally (Score:4, Funny)

    by John Pfeiffer (454131) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:55PM (#12982677) Homepage
    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
  • In Soviet Russia the computer prints with paint brushes and artists print laser printers, wait a second...

  • Roland Piquepaille Watch Alert (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2005, @10:03PM (#12982706)
    And once again, /. publishes a story by Roland Piquepaille [slashdot.org] 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...

    • You are making the assumption that slashdotters RTFA, which is false.

      And anyway, stop complaining, at least it's not a dupe. (or is it? i haven't checked :)
    • You complain about him posting interesting articles on slashdot and referencing his blog to make some advertisement revenue, but you don't complain about the advertisements on the side of slashdot itself. As long as his articles are good reads, I personally don't mind, and I think these constant "ROLAND WARNINGS" should be considered harrassment and modded flamebait, not insightful.

      My 2c.
    • It's obvious that Roland Piquepaille has some connection with Slashdot... but who cares? He runs a blog that is basically much like Slashdot where he scours the web and finds interesting links and writes about them. So what if /. links to him and gives him some money through the traffic?

      There's no question that he's getting special treatment with the amount of accepted submissions he gets, but nepotism and cronyism has been around since the beginning of time. I doubt it's any more sinister than Piquepaille
    • Whenever I complain about a website - I immediately look up if there's a greasemonkey script somewhere. Sort of social web-editing :)

      Now here's a De-Piquepaille [daishar.com] script for everyone to use it happily.

    • How hard do you think it'd be to add a "Slashdot submission blurb" field to your blogging software so that this sort of thing was done automatically for every article.
      • 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

  • What's Next...? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by creimer (824291) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:07PM (#12982718) Homepage
    Won't be long before we can start learning pottery on the computer. Nothing like a good virtual clay pot. :P

  • ...any bets? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by erroneus (253617) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:07PM (#12982720) Homepage
    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.

  • Patent Issues? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by buckhead_buddy (186384) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:10PM (#12982728)
    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.

    • This seems to me to only have value as a plugin. From the effect they have managed to pull of, the authors could probably make a comfortable living off of it.

    • Re:Patent Issues? (Score:2, Informative)

      by sankyuu (847178)

      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)

    • 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 [corel.com]

      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 avail

  • Input Devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sideswiped (259402) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:23PM (#12982783)
    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.

    • You could use a fountain pen (feedback) and a scanner (computer input); they're both pretty affordable and many people already have one or the other. A force-feedback stylus emulating a pen on a surface of the user's choice would still be cool, though.

      • Re:Input Devices (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sakusha (441986)
        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.
    • However, the only time putting a piece of paper over your Wacom tablet would be useful is if you're emulating pen-and-ink or colored pencils, etc. For painting, I *prefer* the slickness, as a paintbrush doesn't transmit the roughness of the paper the same way (unless you're dry-brushing or scumbling.)

    • 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

  • Full Article Text (htmlized, coralized) (Score:2, Informative)

    by 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 [trnmag.com], 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 in
  • Moxy is a copyrighted trademarked carbonated beverage where I come from. Trouble is, they haven't changed their recipe in something like 100 years, back when carbonated beverages were new. Back then, you could water manure down, carbonate it, add some ice and sell it for a nickel. And thats about what Moxy tastes like.

    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.

    • As others have mentioned what you are thinking of is Moxie - Moxi [moxi.com] is a trademark of Digeo [digeo.com] and is the name of a DVR
    • Trademark law is designed to protect against consumers confusing products - a floor wax and a dessert topping could both use the same name without risk of trademark dilution, but two floor waxes can't have similar names without the newer one interfering with the older one. (So the other day's article about the guy who trademarked Stealth and keeps trying to get people to pay him off is mostly abuse of the process but occasionally reasonable.)

      So can you tell Moxie the soda from ink? If you spill it on pa

  • Cassidy Curtis's CG watercolors (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bleppie (129980) on Monday July 04 2005, @11:13PM (#12982944)
    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/ [otherthings.com]

  • My nomination for today's stupidest quote: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kongjie (639414) <kongjie.mac@com> on Monday July 04 2005, @11:27PM (#12982985)
    "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."

  • Ew (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hikaru79 (832891) on Monday July 04 2005, @11:32PM (#12983000) Homepage
    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... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FFFish (7567) on Monday July 04 2005, @11:45PM (#12983028) Homepage
    Corel Natural Painter. It, too, simulates individual bristles, ink flow, pressure and angle, etcetera.
  • 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.

  • Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dire Bonobo (812883) on Tuesday July 05 2005, @01:25AM (#12983269)
    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 [acm.org]), and instrumented haptic brushes with underlying simulated-brush models were examined in 2001 (brush models [psu.edu] instrumented brush (pdf) [google.com].

    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 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Sparohok (318277)
    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

    • Re:ads (Score:5, Informative)

      by nmoog (701216) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:08PM (#12982724) Homepage Journal
      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 [daishar.com]

      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...

      • Re:ads (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JanneM (7445)
        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.

          • Re:ads (Score:4, Informative)

            by sinner0423 (687266) <sinner0423 AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday July 05 2005, @12:19AM (#12983111)
            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.
    • 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.
    • the idea is to Hand write on a computer not for the computer to "clone" the writers, but to imitate the ink and paper so the art can be done on a computer... saving the expense of paper, ink, and allowing it to be easily distributed. That allows more people to experience it... and those who do it in real life to enter a new world.

      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.

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