Our Dr. Nelson Chu was honored to be invited to give a series of talks  in Taiwan in June:  two public talks on the  development   of  digital ink painting technology  in  Taipei and Hsinchu, and one keynote at the Computer Graphics Workshop (CGW) 2017 in Taichung.  We thank Prof. James Chu of Tsing Hua University for hosting the talks and his thoughtful arrangements and help during Nelson's visit.

Dr Chu's seminal work on digital ink painting simulation was first published at SIGGRAPH 2005 and he was awarded PhD for that in 2007. Although he left the academia for many years now, today Computer Graphics researchers still remember his contributions to digital painting technologies.  The industry  also  recognizes  Nelson's work - back in 2006, Adobe already licensed Nelson's work, hoping to get it into Photoshop. Last year Wacom invited Nelson to be a panelist at their Connected Ink event  to discuss the future of digital ink.  This year, Microsoft has invited Nelson to be at various launch events (new Surface Pro's global launch   in Shanghai, local launches  in  Hong Kong, and Taiwan). Microsoft CVP Panos Panay  likes Expresii so much that he would introduce Expresii on stage himself!

We thank all the visitors including  folks from  大禧堂  for coming. Nelson visited their studio earlier that day to ​  discuss digital calligraphy creation.   大禧堂 的朋友太客氣了 ， 非常感謝大禧堂的招待與美意！

We're  supposed to end at 9pm but people  won't leave  until the security guard came to  close the  lecture room.  ^_^

We're honored to have  Prof.  Chintay Shih, a very prominent figure in Taiwan, in our  Hsinchu  talk.  Prof. Shih  loves calligraphy and gave us valuable feedback.  We thank Martin Sun, ex-President of  Wacom Taiwan,  for introducing Prof. Shih and various people from the industry to us. We also had the chance to give away some copies of the Meerkat Ojisan 's    comics book to the audience.

感謝台灣前工研院董事長史欽泰教授  以及  幾位台灣不同大學的教授光臨指導。史欽泰教授酷愛書法，也給了我們寶貴的意見~

Taiwanese  people are super friendly and polite.  This trip   to Taiwan was great but too packed for various events - there're so much more for us to explore including food and interesting places. We will definitely come back!

這次真是非常感謝台灣，讓我們有機會來交流，而且也嚐到台灣美食！台灣人真的非常熱情，非常有禮。這次台灣之旅行程滿滿的，非常充實和有意義！只嫌不夠時間真正的逛逛和太多的美食還未有機會吃到，哈哈。最後附上Nelson  寫的一些數位書法送給熱情的台灣～～ 下次再見！！

​Our Dr. Nelson Chu  was invited to do live demo of Expresii in the launch event by Microsoft to showcase the New Surface Pro for the Taiwanese market. The audience was one again wowed by the combination of great software and hardware, which enable us to do what we couldn't before.
​
我們的Nelson 到了台灣，於New Surface Pro 的發佈會上當神秘嘉賓，從影片裡走到現場，為大家示範在全新Surface Pro上潑墨揮毫，這次非常成功的吸引到大家的青睞！

We thank Taiwan for having us!​   We'll definitely come back to meet with friendly Taiwanese people anytime!
​熱情的台灣人讓Nelson感受非常深刻，所以忍不住也寫了一下'有個熱情的地方名字叫台灣'的來感謝台灣！

We were invited to help showcase the new Surface Pro and the Surface Studio at Microsoft's Hong Kong Launch Event on the 13th of June. Hong Kong is a place where East meets West and is certainly a great place to show the new devices combined with world's leading software technology of  Expresii    for Eastern ink painting and calligraphy.

​Look at the vector-like high-resolution rendering - you won't see a single pixel even when zoomed in so much. We're getting the best of both worlds of raster and vector.

Comics artist  Little Thunder    was fascinated by how much more advanced Expresii is! She could really appreciate the brush & ink simulation and the high-res rendering capability of Expresii. Little Thunder was greatly influenced by her parents in pursuing her artistic career - her father does traditional Chinese ink painting and calligraphy.

Our Dr. Nelson Chu is invited to give a series of talks  in  Taiwan later this month.  The first two are  to be held in Taipei and Hsinchu on 26th and 27th of June  respectively, while the last one is a keynote at the Computer Graphics Wrokshop 2017  to be held in Taichung 29th-30th of June.  Details in Chinese are given below.

Please forward this post to anyone you know in Taiwan who might be interested.  Thank you and hope to see you there!

講座：數位​毛筆​水墨​工具​的發展【台北場】【新竹場】

簡介：東方水墨藝術源遠流長，多年來在創作概念、技法、工具上均不停演進。踏入數位化年代，眾多傳統藝術媒介都受到數位媒體沖撃而不斷求變，水墨藝術亦不例外。講者朱紹恆博士十多年來致力把藝術與科技結合，設計各種繪畫媒材的模擬技術，其中包括革命性的毛筆水墨模擬軟體，突破了以往模擬毛筆軟體線條缺乏變化，和水墨缺乏細膩流動感的局限。是次演講朱博士會介紹他的研發歷程，並討論數位水墨軟體於書法、漫畫、動畫等發展方向。

講者：朱紹恆博士 (Dr. Nelson Chu)
香港出生，澳門長大。自 1999 年研發虛擬毛筆，2005 年於國際頂尖電腦繪圖技術大會 SIGGRAPH 上發表其水墨模擬技術， 次年 Adobe 向其大學購買該技術使用權。2008 年北京奧運開幕禮也應用了其軟件做出水墨動畫效果。2008 年朱氏應邀到美國微軟總部開發繪圖軟件技術，成果最終化為繪畫程式 Fresh Paint。2011 年回流，開發新一代繪圖軟件 Expresii，獲Wacom 高層譽為最棒的水墨書法軟件，現亦為微軟推廣Surface 產品之軟件夥伴。

對象：歡迎任何對傳統書法、水墨​藝術跟數位應用結合有興趣的人士參加！

費用：全免

主辦：國立清華大學
協辦：國立台灣科技大學

【台北場】
時間：2017/6/26 (星期一) 晚上 19:00～21:00
地點：國立臺灣科技大學 【綜合研究大樓】 RB-102 國際會議廳

【新竹場】
時間：2017/6/27 (星期二) 晚上 19:00～21:00
地點：國立清華大學 【台達館】107教室

座位有限，請即報名  !!

Update:  We created entries at KKTRIX :【台北場】,  【新竹場】
You can click on the Outlook or Google calendar  item there to put them in your calendar.

另注：台北、新竹後，Nelson 會轉到台中，應台灣CGW2017 計算機圖形學大會邀請，當Keynote Speaker，詳情請看：http://cgw2017.cs.pu.edu.tw

Expresii was accepted in Appy Hour of SIGGRAPH 2017 to be held in Los Angeles. See the Advance Program. 

2017-06-10 Update: And here is the accompanying 30-sec video.

So we are told ! :)  ​ We were invited to demo at the Microsoft world-wide launch event last week in Shanghai.  We're glad to be back to this amazing city to enjoy great food and all that. ​ ​ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Visitors were amazed by the simulation and rendering quality of Expresii. Look at how the ink flows down the gorgeous screen of the Surface Studio.  Look at how beautifully the artworks are rendered on the screen. Look at how  you can make organic strokes with our breakthrough technology!

It was really great to have visitors and also Microsoft folks telling us  Expresii was the most impressive  demo in the launch event.  "Everyone keeps talking about how beautiful  the app is!  "       ​٩( ´･ш･)و       

​​And yes, Expresii was shown  along side  much bigger players like  Adobe, Autodesk and Corel.  Given our presence, Corel Painter can't really call itself the most natural painting simulator.

"I can’t think of a program that better demonstrates the power of their inking platform than Expresii"  - a customer

" 遇到了一直关注的数字水墨软件expresii的创始人，感受了业内最精彩的模拟现实绘画软件；科技和艺术的大碰撞"    - 郑昊煜RADIO

A big big thank you to Angela Wong of Rooftop Animation  for coming along to help amidst her busy schedule.  
m ( _    _ ) m

Below are shots  of Microsoft CVP Panos  Panay  showing Expresii  during the keynote.  See the video again here.

We're now also invited to join Microsoft's event  in Hong Kong  to be held in 13 June  in PMQ.  Hope to see you there!

Panos Panay of Microsoft really likes Expresii and we were invited by Microsoft to be in their App Partner video and also showcase our Expresii app in their May 23rd launch event in Shanghai.  It was a great honor that Panos  himself introduces Expresii to the world in their keynote:

You can also watch the  full keynote with Chinese translation here (按這裡看華語傳譯) .  It was great to meet people in person and have guests telling us that Expresii was the most impressive demo shown in the whole event. ​

​Check out this collage app-partner video from Microsoft, featuring Expresii:

We've been asking hardware makers to add pen tilt support for years, and are certainly happy to see the new Surface Pen getting tilt sensing support. The new Surface Pro also features latest Intel processor and is completely silent thanks to the no-fan thermal design for the m3 and i5 models.  See the details in Microsoft's blog.

Expresii is now also available in the Windows 10 Store  for $89.99. The Store version of Expresii is the same as the Win32 version except that you can't have tabs in the Setting Windows as separate windows  for now. FYI, we use a converter to convert the original Win32 version into  what Microsoft calls a 'UWP' app as our Windows 10 Store version.  ​Performance-wise, our test indicates that the converted app takes slightly longer to start (1.6s vs 1s), but otherwise performances virtually the same during painting,  on an i5 Surface Pro 4. 

The availability of Expresii on Windows 10 Store doesn't affect users buying  a license for  the Win32 version of Expresii via    Gumroad.  For those who don't have Windows  ​10,  you can always use the original Win32 version, which runs on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10.

Update: see a report from the demo show floor  in our next blog entry!

When Apple   introduced the Apple Pencil, I was thrilled to find out the Apple Pencil supporting tilt. Eastern calligraphy appeared two times in their launch video. The first one is writing '書'  in red (below). 

Since its early versions, Painter has been using 'dots  within a circle' as the brush footprint to give a 'bristle' effect (video below).  Procreate seems to use a similar method to do bristle effect - the dab could be a captured image instead of one generated on the fly.  Interestingly, Adobe's 3D brushes give effect similar   to what these 2D brushes give  - the 3D nature seems to be not put into good use. In fact, when Samsung's latest Galaxy Book tablet was announced, demonstrators actually had a hard time showing off the new pen tilt feature with Photoshop, because no matter how they tilted the brush, they still got strokes as if  done in 2D without tilt support. By the way,  when a brush is enlarged, why does  it start to sprinkle smaller version of itself?

In order to capture the nuance we normally get when using a real brush, we devised a more efficient 3D brush model. By efficient we mean we don't need to model it as 'individual bristles' as in Adobe's 3D brushes [1], and yet we believe we get more stroke variations than they do.  Our brush model also looks and acts more like a real brush instead of a brush made of stiff wires.  All in all, we believe our brush is the most natural and intuitive to use among all paint apps available today.

I can only recognize two characters '秋月'  from  what is written in the second appearance of Eastern calligraphy above so let's try writing the same characters in different styles in Expresii: ​​

And another demo  '筆墨'  for you.  In Expresii, every stroke has  its own character, its personality.   You can 't make the same stroke twice.

And I love doing designs like the following using Expresii.  You can do designs quickly and easily just like using a real Chinese brush.

And don't just take our words. See what Shaun Bryant has to say:

We all know that raster-based paint programs are good for stroke richness  but you can't really zoom in too much.  Adobe came up with a solution of generating vector graphics  [1] for high resolution rendering.  For this to work, you're effectively  switching entirely to their vector-based tool, namely Illustrator.  When enlarged, you see many individual polygons overlapping each other (below). Personally, I don't think it looks too pretty nor natural, not to mention the added burden of rendering thousands of polygons.  ​(๑´╹‸╹`๑)

We came up with an entirely different solution to the fat pixel problem. We can zoom in a lot, but the marks still look natural.   ​ Jony Ive ended Apple's launch video with "gives you the ability to touch a single pixel".  And here I'd like to say we give you to ability to zoom in a lot without seeing a single pixel.  (￣▽￣)ノ​

People complain  about the younger generation  being occupied by gadgets and  too few are doing traditional arts. If you are an educator involved with art or East Asian languages,  please consider joining us for this digital calligraphy  revolution. Technology  and art are not mutually exclusive. You can start teaching digital calligraphy today. Together, we'll work to revitalize this ancient art form.  Leave a comment below or message via Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Thank you!

Reference:
[1] from their paper "Industrial-Strength Painting with a Virtual Bristle Brush", 2010.

2017.04.30 Update:  we are informed that the piece of calligraphy was done by  Prof  王冬齡, and in the video, the shot should be showing him signing his name '冬齡'.  [ref 1] [ref 2]

The Nintendo Joycon connects to a Windows machine via Bluetooth and can be used as a remote control for painting.   If you want a (much)  cheaper alternative,  here is one VR controller called 'R1' that costs only $5!  Thanks to  the booming VR  thing, there're many such controllers released recently, but you have to be careful because some of them do not connect to a PC.  The R1  in particular is known to connect to a Win8/Win10 PC via bluetooth. 

I love the R1 being a one-handed bluetooth device, but it may not be the most comfortable to use because of the positions of the buttons.  You can of course use a conventional game controller like we showed you in this blog entry, but then they are designed for two-hand operation and are less portable.  Personally, I use keyboard shortcuts mostly because when I paint, I'm mostly sitting on a desk.  I think if I train myself well, those controllers can be very useful for quick operations when I don't have a keyboard.  FYI, the R1 doesn't send multiple-button signal and the thumb-stick doesn't give analog signal when paired with a PC.  Normal game controllers  designed for the PC should have no problem with these two things.

We're also lucky enough to finally get hold of a Surface Dial.  The following  is a quick video  after we have had it for a few days with the Surface Pro 4:

My first impression for the Dial is that it's not designed for quick  muscle-memory operations. I wished it had more buttons.  As it is, I think it's best used for timeline scrolling or, like in our demo video, canvas rotation.  For zooming &  panning,  I surely prefer  multi-touch gesture.  Interestingly, a dial with buttons  actually  already exists - the  $60, wired  ShuttleXpress  (and also other similar products). Wish to try it one day.  ﾍ(=￣∇￣)ﾉ​

Made a few animated GIF for the new year with Expresii.  

Running chicken 走雞：

Essentially these animations are done using the Overlay as onion skin.  You can also apply LightBox effect on the Overlay.  You can toggle the Overlay via  hotkeys ~ ` to alpha = 0 and 1. We output the frames to another program to do cropping or composition,  and then  feed the final frames to an online GIF maker  to make the GIFs.

The following videos shows some of the stroking process:

Finally here is a Lion Dance greeting GIF made by Rooftop Animation using Expresii (along with Photoshop, etc) for the new year: