Virtual Chinese Brush

Research & Development:
Nelson Chu and Chiew-Lan Tai

Vision & Graphics Group (VisGraph)
Computer Science Department
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Last update: 07.10.2004
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New Video Clips
Note: These videos are compressed either with codec MS MPEG-4 or DivX 5.x.
If you can't play them, please contact the authors (via links above).
Collage 2004
(1.5 min, 13.3MB, /w music)
 A collage made from videos linked from this page and some other clips. If you got only 1.5 minutes, you may want to see just this one.
Using Tablet
(2.5 min, 15MB)
 This video shows you more closely the control of the brush possible with a tablet. Is this what you expect from a 'natural media' paint system?
 
Flower strokes
(4 min, 33MB)

A demonstration of spontaneous painting, from the first to the last strokes, including undo's. Here you see the slanted-brush technique for making pedal shapes. The undocumented 'eraser mode' is also shown near the end.
Splitting
(27sec, 6.4MB)
 A clip showing how the spline structure evolves as a brush splits.
Real splitting
(1 min, 4.8MB)
 A clip showing the spltting of real brushes for you to compare. For more online videos of real brushes, you can visit Oriental Art Supply.
 
Coarse texture
(1 min, 14MB)
 A relatively dry brush splits into multiple tufts. In this clip, paper texture also comes into play in producing the white streaks (although not very prominently) due to lessened ink and pressure.
Wu Wei
(24 sec, 3.3MB)
 A piece of calligraphy 'wu wei' done with multiple tufts. In this video, there are three tufts working at the same time.
Stroke recording
(46 sec, 11.3MB)

This videos shows the stroke recording and playback functions of our system. Here, we show that we can get slightly different strokes by having a different initial brush skeleton.

Manual flatterning
(27 sec, 4.6MB)
 Manual flattening the brush, like what you do in real life. When doing strokes like those used for tree trunks, artists nip the brush tip to flatten it. Now you can do it in our system too.
Soaked brush
(32 sec, 11.3MB)
 When the tip is still wet, white streaks will not show up in the begining of a stroke. This simple 'soaked-brush' effect is for realizing this.
Lower view
(53 sec, 11.2MB)
 This video shows the painting scene from a lower camera position.
Closer look
(22 sec, 3.8MB)
 This video gives a closer look at how natural-looking ink streaks are generated according to brush footprints.
More videos to come. Stay tuned.
All rights reserved. All paintings and calligraphy by Nelson Chu, unless stated otherwise.
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