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Graphics Software

Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer 154

Posted by timothy from the snatch-the-pebble-from-my-hand dept.
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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Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer More

Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer

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  • Photo (Score:1, Funny)

    by mboverload ( 657893 )
    What the hell? I can paint just fine with photoshop, thank you.

  • finally (Score:4, Funny)

    by John Pfeiffer ( 454131 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:55PM (#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
    • I thought its been a part of Photoshop since version 6, IIRC? Here [informit.com] 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.
    • How is it, I make a serious statement, and it gets modded funny, but I say that I'd give anything for that idiot that owns the word 'stealth' to be killed by ninjas...and no one gets it?
  • 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 @11:03PM (#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...

    • It must be your feet.... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      prostoalex [slashdot.org] leads the /. hall of fame [slashdot.org].
      • 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

    • Re:Roland Piquepaille Watch Alert (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      prostoalex has the higher number of posts and owns a blog. If you just here for whinning go elsewhere.
    • 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 :)
    • Don't like him?
      Set your proxy to block his site.
    • 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's Next...? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:07PM (#12982718)
    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 @11:07PM (#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 @11:10PM (#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
      • Thanks for the clarification about what happened to Painter versus Expression. I would be curious who owns Fractal Designs patent portfolio; hopefully it's Corel, but I could also see Corel just buying a license to the necessary tech and the actual patents being sold to someone else.

        My mention of Photoshop wasn't meant to imply that Expression had a similar purpose, but was intended as a description of the few GUI changes that Microsoft changed with Expression (e.g. Photoshop-like layers).
      • don't forget ProCreate - the company that briefly held the Painter reins for version 6. I think the idea of having a rabbit mascot and a drip of paint for a company called Procreate was genius.

        From what I remember (having used Painter since ~'97)
        Fractal Design Painter was v1-3
        MetaCreations Painter 4
        Corel Painter 5
        ProCreate Painter 6
        Corel Painter 7-present.

  • Input Devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sideswiped ( 259402 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:23PM (#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.
      • A nice cheap solution, but I'd imaging it would be time consuming. Not to mention you would lose the benifit of realtime manipulation and have a reliance on traditional materials.

      • 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.
      • 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 direct-to-digital emulation of this would have some distinct advantages, however. Not the least of which is an "undo" capability. I'm a clumsy inker, which means I have to do a lot of digital removal of my mistakes after scanning (at least it's better than white-out) and more than occasionally have to throw an illustration out and start over.

    • In case there's no prior art ..there probbably is since it's so damn obvious .. here's how I'd implement it .. have a netwrok of electromagnets under the tablet .. and a magent inside the pen (or vice versa or even an electromagnet in both). The electromagnets can attract repel in order to provide the necessary force feedback to duplicate texture and other stuff. Actually the device can be used for more than just art and writing it can perhaps be used for games. So make that "writing/input instrument" rathe
    • Perhaps this [homesteadhomehealth.com] is what you're looking for.
    • 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! (Score:2)

    by dj245 ( 732906 )
    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 Tuesday July 05, 2005 @12:13AM (#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]
    • or that Steve Strassman did at M.I.T.'s media lab back in 1985 and 1986. See the Stuart Brand book and look in the center of it for his little brushed wet ink shrimp pictures.
      • aha it was his master's thesis and the code word for finding it on google is "hairy brush":

        BrusherApplet
        Recently I had reason to reimplement steve strassman's 'hairy brush' master's
        thesis from 1986, in the course of which I created this test applet. ...
        http://www.flong.com/brush/ [flong.com]

        Citations: Hairy Brushes - Strassman (ResearchIndex)
        Steve Strassman, Hairy Brushes, ACM SIGGRAPH, Vol 20, No 4 (1986). ...
        Steve Strassmann. Hairy brushes. In Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on ...
        sherry.ifi.unizh.ch/ [slashdot.org]

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

    by kongjie ( 639414 ) <kongjie@ma c . com> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @12:27AM (#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 Tuesday July 05, 2005 @12:32AM (#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...

    • Re:Ew (Score:1)

      by Stu22 ( 793796 )
      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.

      Although some anti-aliasing would be in order, you'd be surprized how crisp edges are on any wet medium. In fact, often the pigment is drawn to the edges of the blots, creating a dark outline. In college I had to draw with markers (before 3D rendering you would marker render), any time you used the clear blender

  • If this doesn't sound like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @12:45AM (#12983028) Homepage
    Corel Natural Painter. It, too, simulates individual bristles, ink flow, pressure and angle, etcetera.

  • Not revolutionary (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is a freely available thesis on the simulation of Chinese brushes titled The Parametric Hairy Brush [wordnerd.org].
  • ...utilizing the source engine, and havok physics!
    • Great, that means that the virtual brush will become stuck in a wall while the ink jumps up from the paper and accelerates to escape velocity. This will become the world's leading tool for abstract painting!
  • 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.

  • 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:

    127.0.0.1 www.primidi.com
  • East of what?

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

    by Dire Bonobo ( 812883 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @02:25AM (#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
  • 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.
  • I love pen computing, (see my website, or my posts to places like http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/active.asp [tabletpcbuzz.com] ) 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 [ambientdesign.com] ), 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
  • 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 a
  • Project Dogwaffle [squirreldome.com] seems like one of the better natural-media paint programs out there. It also has a freeware version. It's fractal-based, so I suspect it's able to simulate the way ink bleeds through paper quite nicely.

    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.

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