Had a chance to  tryout the new OneXPlayer X1 air's performance. Very  happy to get 200+ FPS. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to try out their WPG pen yet.  But I was told that it supports tilt sensing, in addition to pressure. 

Also had a chance to try out  the very new (not yet available) Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (Gen 3) and the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3).  The new Pen Tech 4.0 is very sensitive in  pressure. Tilt sensing is also much more stable then last time we used Huion. The slim pen and also the eraser tip button that also gives pressure is a very welcomed feature.

I Tried running Expresii on a GPD Win Max 2 (2023) with AMD Ryzen 7840U, 32GB RAM.​ It's actually more like a small laptop than a handheld, as it is a bit heavy to hold for a period of time. It is very responsive running Expresii. Please check out the demo featuring the use of G-sensor for intuitive digital watercolor paint flow:

Why gaming handheld PC? Because they have fast GPUs yet they are compact. I confirm that the Win Max 2 can connect to an external nvidia GPU for both cases of using Thunderbolt and Oculink.  That would be useful if you do AI development as today most AI code ran on Nvidia rather than on an AMD (their ROCm 7.0 is still not officially released yet!). Wake up from sleep on Windows 11 of this deivce (7840U) is immediate on par with a desktop PC. In comparison, my older 6800U   OneXPlayer 2    sometimes takes quite a while to wake up. So far I'm quite happy with the Win Max 2 ​.

Many MPP (Microsoft Pen Protocol) 2.0 pen displays exhibit certain level of wobbling for slow diagonal lines. Luckily the GPD Win Max 2  only exhibit slight wobbles:

For comparision, here is the slight wobbles given by a Surface Pro 8:

For comparision, the 6800U OneXPlayer 2 supporting the same MPP 2.0 protocol pens gives a bit more wobbles:

Hopefully their newer models like the OneXPlayer X1 Air can give less wobbles.

There are several brands of portable  display with pen and touch support.  Recently we tried Intehill U16ZT-B.   Several years ago, I  bought my first portable display and it was an Intehill too. That one's colors are too saturated.  Several years later, I think their colors are much more accurate now. Their   U16ZT-B is rather light for an 16" 16:10 at 890g. Their  anti-glare screen works well for removing glare.  The 3K resolution is also adaqate as I believe a higher resolution would be blurred by the anti-glare   treatment. 

From an artist's perspective, the main complain is the wobbles for slow diagonal lines.   Many MMP-based pen display have this issue.   If you don't do slow diagonal lines often, it's probably okay. Another   complain   would be that the kickstand is too small that if you stroke with the pen on the screen, the screen would be moved.  I guess that mean syou need to use a separate stand if you are really to paint on this display. But it's good that they have VESA holes that you can mount this display.

I also have an eHomewei RQ3 17.3" pen display. Previously, we also tried an earlier model from eHomewei, and that gives line wobbles.   Last year I bought a new model   RQ3,  and to my delight, there is no wobble at all!   See the video below:

EMR pen displays won't have the wobble issue and have been the choice for artists.   Now, we also have an MPP-based pen display that doesn't give wobble.   Great to have more options!

The host PC is Aoostar GT37 mini PC.  It's very compact and sleek, and even support connecting to an eGPU via oculink.   The only thing I want to have is one more USB type-c port, so that after using one for portable display, I can still have another one for other stuffs.

Previously we tested EasyCanvas with an Android device. Today, we tested EasyCanvas again but with an iPad Air 4.

Our host PC is an AMD 7840HS. We get around 90 FPS when the iPad is connected to the PC via an USB cable. We weren't able to get wifi connection working, unfortunately. Make sure you check the 'Winodws Ink' checkbox in Expresii so that Expresii uses the standard pen API of Windows instead of Wintab DLL like those shipped by Wacom XP-Pen or Huion.

The following video shows how the painting experience is when the auto-setter is enabled.   It alsos shows that you can change the brush visualization.

We took part in the exhbition of SIGGRAPH ASIA in Tokyo 4-6 December 2024. This time, we had Sensei Shuen help demo Expresii to the audience. 

We had a chance to meet with  artists including 五天晴 . famous of his work on digital Chinese ink related 3D work.   

The following are video recording of sensei   Shuen painting live at the event. Check out those super-high resolution rendering at the end of the video.  You see very thin lines as well as organic flow patterns~

There have been visitors saying they use paint apps like Procreate and ran into the issue of not being able to enlarge their artwork.   That's why they are  amazed to learn about the innovative   vector-like zooming capability of Expresii!      The next video captures a conversation  with a visitor along this line:

Yes, we show you that you can always change paper profiles for a different texture too, while keeping all those high-resolution rendering:

Thank you for all the appreciation~   Yes, we keep working on Expresii, including the improvement of layer support. 

Again, we thank CGVisual for having us at their booth. See you in SIGGRAPH ASIA 2025 in Hong Kong!

We  were lucky enough to have a chance to present a gift to Dr. Jensen Huang while he was in Hong Kong.  The gift is a piece of calligraphy hand-written with Expresii by our Dr. Nelson Chu.   The text written is a poem made with the help of ChatGPT AI. The following is a video documenting its making.

On 23 November 2024, Jensen Huang received an honorary doctorate   in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Dr. Chu  was honored to    present the gift to Dr. Huang on the same day.   Both Dr. Huang and Dr. Chu are now fellow HKUST alumni.​   ^_^    

The first characters of each verse are from the Chinese names of Jensen Huang (仁勲) and Nvidia (輝達). Here is a  short  English   explanation of the text:

仁芯拓算力: Jensen’s chips (pun ‘kind heart’) expands computing power.
勲業領風流: Nvidia (‘distinguished work’) leading the way.
輝影繪千變: Computer imagery transforms. 
達智創新猷: Reaching intelligence, creating new strategies.

The stamp ‘墨戲’ (MoXi) on the upper right of the piece  was from a physical seal and is the name of the software prototype Dr. Chu made at HKUST.   The  sundial on the lower left was painted by Dr. Chu digitally while he was at HKUST around 2006 using the MoXi prototype. 

Calligraphy is a highly regarded art form in East-Asian cultures.   In late 90's, Dr. Chu set off to create a virtual brush system for digital calligraphy  & painting.  That was also the dawn of modern GPU computing - in early 2000's, Nvidia made the first GPU with programmable shading, together with  software components like the Cg language,   that can be used for general purposes including fluid simulation.  With the help of the latest GPU technology, Dr. Chu was able to unveil a software   prototype   featuring a virtual brush   in 2002 and present the MoXi prototype  featuring both virtual brush and virtual ink at SIGGRAPH 2005.   You can say it was Dr. Huang's company that made Dr. Chu's dream come true!   Dr. Chu's   MoXi research paper   was also the first all-local-effort SIGGRAPH paper attributed to HKUST and Hong Kong.  

We thank the HKUST management for allowing such a gift presentation to happen. The smile on Jensen's face was priceless! We also thank Helen, Vv, Wilson Yuen and Tiffany Tang for their support!

In mid-October,  we had an opportunity to work with Hong Kong Dance Company  for a show called "After Snowfall - Expressions of Wang Xizhi’s timeless brushstrokes大型舞蹈詩《快雪時晴》 —— 王羲之書法隨想". Essentially, it's a dance show inspired by a calligraphy work by Wang Xizhi. The HK Dance Company would like to add some technology element into the mix.   

We did some calligraphy and painting under the theme of dance.   For the four days of dance performance, fives Expresii digital ink works were made:  【香港舞蹈團】、【鼓舞飛揚】、【扇舞翩躚】、【蹈歌墨舞】、【傘舞輕旋】.

For calligraphy videos, please see our Facebook page:  HKDance香港舞蹈團    Drum 鼓舞飛揚    Fan扇舞翩躚    Song蹈歌墨舞

The "CoPilot+ PC" Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 became available since June 2024. We tested them in June but were rather disapointed with the performance: we got only 17 FPS on the X Elite model with OpenGL implementation Mesa 24.1.0.  Now a few months have passed and we found some good performance  increase: we now get 50 FPS with   Mesa 24.3.0!  

Microsoft has probably also optimized the Prism emulator to give the performance boost. There is still on ARM-native version of Expresii so we still need to rely on the Prism emulator.   If you want to use Sufrace Pro 11 for Expresii, make sure you use the X Elite model instead of the X Plus  model, because the latter only gives 22 FPS now. Also, note that the new Surface Laptop 7 DO NOT support pen input (older models of Surface Laptop do).   If you want  smooth performance for painting, you should pick up older models like the Surface Pro 8 i5, which can give 100+ FPS.

VMWare has recently made their virutal machine software Fusion free-for-personal-use. The current version also supports OpenGL 4.2, which is more than what Expresii requires. We gave a shot on running Expesii using it. The good news is that Expresii  runs without error.

However, one hurdle is that graphics tablets are not plug-and-play.

We finally got  tablet  input working using another piece of softwar called USB Network Gate:

And here is how everything working together:

Performance is only 30-40 FPS on a M1 Mac Book Air, not as good as using Parallels Desktop.  Anyway, this is still one option you can use Expresii on a modern Mac with an ARM  chip. We hope VMware continued to imprve the performance  and also the USB device pass-through. 

We took part in the Hong Kong Illustration and Creative Show 2024 Spring, giving  some talk or demonstrattion at the CGLive booth.  During his talk, our Dr. Nelson Chu showed a little sneak peak of what he's working on for simulating Western watercolor. 

​​We are lucky to have Sensei Shuen to give a demonstration at the booth.  You can learn a lot from her on ink painting and the use of Expresii:

This piece "劔舞乾坤" (sword dance) is spirited.  The subject's pose, the composition, the linework, the contrast all contributed to the energetic look of it. Find out how it's done in the above video!

And here's the calligraphy our Dr. Nelson Chu did  as inscription for the painting:

The all new WACOM Movink was on pre-oder at the show. It's among the few places  where you can try the new hardware first hand. Pretty good price at HKD5889 there (compared to the offcial price in another region next to Hong Kong)! It's really thin and light.