Our Nelson Chu couldn't make it to SIGGRAPH this year but huge thanks to our friend Li-Yi Wei for demo'ing Expresii at SIGGRAPH 2017 for us! We also thank all those who came to check our our program and gave us feedback! Many of you asked for a Mac or an iPad version. Yup, we hear you. One even mistook our Windows app for an iPad app. :) Li-Yi told us Expresii was very popular at the Appy Hour. See Li-Yi speaking on behalf of us: And in this video Akshay Agarwal, Mobile Chair of SIGGRAPH 2017 also specifically mentioned Expresii as one of his favorite apps shown at the event: New to this year is the Facebook live videos. Review those videos on their Facebook page or their Youtube channel. And, again, if you are new to Expresii, be sure the checkout this demo video for what can be achieved with our revolutionary brush and ink simulation and hybrid-vector-raster rendering:
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SIGGRAPH 2017 is just around the corner!In celebration of Expresii showcased at SIGGRAPH 2017 Appy Hour, we're running a 25%-off SALE till 4 Aug 2017! Download Expresii: http://www.expresii.com/download.html Use this link to have the promo code pre-applied at Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/l/FLdY/siggraph2017 WHILE SUPPLIES LAST: Use the promo code "FriendOfPixel" to get a free Exhibits Only pass to SIGGRAPH 2017. Register for SIGGRAPH here. Update: Hear our Nelson Chu talk about his experience on attending SIGGRAPH and his story creating Expresii in this SIGGRAPH SPOTLIGHT podcast .
From Passion to Academia to IndustryOur 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! Taipei TalkThe first talk was given on 2017/06/26 in the National Taiwan University of Science & Technology 國立台灣科技大學 in Taipei: 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. ^_^ Hsinchu TalkThe second talk was given on 2017/06/27 in National Tsing Hua University 國立清華大學 in Hsinchu: 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~ Computer Graphics Workshop (CGW) 2017
Thank you Taiwan!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!! Expresii was accepted in Appy Hour of SIGGRAPH 2017 to be held in Los Angeles. See the Advance Program. It took a while to prepared that 2-page Abstract - nowadays it's much stricter on the document formatting. ;-) Anyway, you can download a copy (16MB hi-res version) from below.
2017-06-10 Update: And here is the accompanying 30-sec video. Expresii was a huge success!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.
Next Stop: Hong KongPanos 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. Excerpt of Expresii's parts from the app partner video : Our parts actually sum to 1/4 of the whole 2 min. app-partner video. ^_^ 我們也是唯一亞洲團隊出現在這宣傳片,其他團隊包括大公司Adobe、Corel和Autodesk。 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 now also available in Windows 10 StoreExpresii 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. Expresii Win32 version for Win XP/7/8/10The 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! Thanks to CGVisual.com, we were able to participate in the SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Exhibition held in Macao last week from 6-8th Decemeber 2016. The show was busier than we expected! As a long-time SIGGRAPH visitor commented, "The show is quite respectable!" (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧ 28" Tiltable & Rotatable SurfaceFor this show, we brought to you the freshly baked Expresii running on a 28" 4K screen held on a gas-strut flexi mount, which provides more degrees of freedom than the just-released Microsoft Surface Studio. We still can't get hold of a Surface Dial yet, so instead we use game controllers as our non-dominant hand remote. For pen input, we still use our trusted Wacom intuos 3 that supports stylus tilt sensing. This new version of Expresii accepts user-definable game controller button assignment. We ran Expresii on an ITX desktop equipped with a mid-range nVidia GPU from the latest generation (Pascal ) for a very smooth painting experience. This CPU used was only an Intel i5 from a few years back. Although Expresii's simulation is so much more advanced than all other paint apps, no super computer is required to run it! OpenGL is used for both our watercolor simulation and rendering. SIGGRAPH is poised as the most prestigous conference for Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques in the world. This time with a large 28" 4K screen, we amazed many visitors with the high-quality rendering of brush strokes and ink flows in Expresii. Everyone says WOW when they see us start rotating the screen and the ink flows down according to the inclination - just like in real life! (°o°;) The following video shows you the secret of how we combine low-cost off-the-shelf hardware with Expresii to crerate this amazing painting experience: We got lots of praises from Computer Graphics professionals including Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI. It was much fun talking to visitors, student volunteers, or other booth staff members alike from all over the world. Look at that cute fox animation that got made right on the spot below! ୧༼✿ ͡◕ д ◕͡ ༽୨ Gamepad as Controller for Digital PaintingDid we mention we can‘t get hold of a Surface Dial so we use a gamepad instead? Both our i-rocks gamepad and the Dial are connected via bluetooth, but the former provides more direct buttons/control than the latter. It can also be held by your non-dominant hard for quick control as you paint (instead of having to be put on some surface level enough so that it doesn't slide down). We believe this is generally preferred over the Dial by digital painters - we want to use muscle memory for fixed functionality instead of figuring what mode we are in or going through radial menu . Wacom offers a similar hand-held Express Key Remote Control with several buttons for their large Cintiq (vs. just one single button and a dial rim). And ClipStudio Paint also offers their own one-hand controller. If one really likes a circular motion offered by the Dial, we can simulate it with the joystick, with which you can, say, circle clockwise & anti-clockwise for undo & redo. Let us know if you prefer a Dial or a hand-held. more collaboration please!We look forward to Surface Pen being tilt-sensitive so that we no longer have to use another controller for adjusting the tilt. We believe both mobile and desktop are important to creators so we will continue working our butts off to innovate in both spaces. It is great that now Microsoft enters into the creator market. We really hope hardware makers can work with us for the best expereince possible. (•̀o•́)ง Acknowledgement
This SIGGRAPH ASIA booth showcase won't be possible without the tremedous help from: Mark Lam of CGVisual Ah Man from VTech H2o and Maggie from lfxLab Angela Wong from Rooftop Animation And Shuen Leung, who allowed us to print her Expresii artwork for the booth We also thank all the old and new friends who came and supported us! Digital Ink - moving forwardAnother Connected Ink event was recently held in Tokyo by Wacom for the promotion of digital ink. Nearly 200 industry leaders from various global technology and stationery companies took part in this event. During the event, Wacom CEO Masahiko Yamada announced the establishment of the Digital Stationery Consortium, Inc., whose mission is to create a movement with cross-industry partners to make digital ink widely adopted and to promote the evolution of smart digital stationery. One of the presenters was Kuretake , a famous Japanese stationery brand whose root is in making traditional Eastern ink and related art supply. Mr. Suguru Takemoto from Kuretake Marketing talked about the "History of Handwriting – roots of ink” and Expresii was used for digital calligraphy demonstration during his presentation on stage: Expresii was also used to demo Wacom's AES pens, which are found in today's various Windows tablets, including the HP Elite x2: Check out the AES pen ID demo and more from our previous blog entry on CES Asia & Connected Ink Shanghai. Digital Ink Calligraphy - Pen or Brush?Today 'digital ink' is often referred to as the digital counterpart of physical ink used with a pen. It's often rendered as rather uniform-looking lines. However, if you mention '墨' (the Chinese character for 'ink') to a Japanese or a Chinese, the first thing they think of is the ink used in their traditional art forms, which inspired great artists like Picasso and Matisse. 'Brush Calligraphy' is one of the most important art forms in East Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea. For thousands of years, East Asians have been using brushes instead of pens to write. For lack of a better word, I could only translate an East Asian Brush as 'writing brush' - because it's designed specifically for expressive lines as required in Eastern calligraphy. Another difference between Western and Eastern calligraphy is the paper used. Eastern art papers are absorbent and you can get a wide range of effects depending on the paper type and how diluted the ink is. There are even a few types of ink that you can choose from giving you even more variations. In the future, we might create a new app specific for this ancient Eastern art form, making it easy for users to use subtle ink effects like these: And in response to Wacom's effort in promoting digital stationery, here is a calligraphy piece '文房具', which means Stationery in Japanese, done by our Dr. Nelson Chu earlier: Let us know if you'd like to see an app specific for Eastern calligraphy from us. If you happen to be in Hong Kong, you might want to check out this talk by our Dr. Nelson Chu on the development of digital brush / ink technology held by the Open University of Hong Kong on 9th Nov 2016.
Poster PDF / List of their other seminars CES (Consumer Electronics Show) AsiaRecently we've been working closely with Wacom and our latest show was at CES Asia held last week in Shanghai, China. This is the second year we have CES Asia in addition to the CES in the US. Wacom is promoting their Pen ID feature and Expresii was used to show off that. Essentially, Pen ID allows you to associate your brush settings to a particular physical pen so that you can simply switch the physical pen when you want to switch your virtual tool . Here is a demo: One of the tablet models we used was the HP Elite X2, among others from Toshiba and Lenovo. Check out the following amazing flow demos in which the HP wa s used .
Wacom's Connected InkOur Dr. Nelson Chu was also invited to be a Panelist at Wacom's event Connected Ink to discuss the future of digital ink. It's held on the 93rd floor of Shanghai World Financial Center , one of the world's tallest buildings during the second day of CES Asia. Expresii attracted many of the participants, including both hardware and software makers. The flowing ink, which you can control by tilting the tablet itself, is simply amazing.
Wacom has been pushing forward the Digital Stationery Consortium as a joint movement around “ink of 21st century”. We are totally aligned with this development. In East Asia, we have been using a writing brush to write for thousands of years. Today calligraphy is a still big part in our lives. The following is a piece of calligraphy '文房具‘ meaning ’ Stationery‘ in Japanese (yes, those are actually Chinese characters ;-) done with Expresii . Notice the high quality rendering that other apps just can't match. Expresii is the best tool I've ever used for calligraphy and ink painting! - Nobutaka Ide, Sr Vice President, Wacom In deed, the strokes and flows in Expresii are so natural, people seeing it for the first time are often in awe. In conclusion, now hardware and software are finally coming together to make advanced creative tool like Expresii easily accessible!
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