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.

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.

In 2014, we tried our hands on a USD150   8" Windows tablet.  Our watercolor flows on such a device, but the Atom-based CPU is rather weak to give a very smooth run. In recent years, more and more handheld gaming devices emerged including quite some running Windows. Among them is the OneXPlayer 2 - one that supports stylus input, touch and its game controllers are detachable, making it possible to be used as an 8" tablet PC!

A few years back, many of those handheld PC's from GPD or OneNetbook  use Intel CPU's.  They are not bad for every-day tasks, but when it comes to integrated GPU performance, those Intel chips were not as good as those from AMD.  Since the last couple of years, thanks to the booming mobile gaming industry, there's a wave of AMD-based gaming handheld coming out, the most recent one being the    Lenovo's Legion Go.  Today we got hold of a OneXPlayer 2 with AMD 6800u and 32GB RAM to test Expresii on. This is last-year's model, and they have a refresh called the OneXPlayer 2 Pro using the AMD 7840U. 

In our tests, the 6800u OneXPlayer 2 can run Expresii smoothly even at 15W max. The device is not primarily designed for painting, or using the pen in general, and we would suggest a few improvements to the design of the system if OneNetbook, the company behind OneXPlayer, wish to cater for pen usage more: 1. when the machine is used like a laptop with the official keyboard attached, the pen stroking on the upper corners of the screen would make the device wobble.   2. device cannot be used like a tablet lying flat on the table, since the air intake grille is on the back. To fix 1, the kickstand can be made wider like the Surface Pro or the latest Lenovo Legion Go. To fix 2, rubber feet could be added, just like for a normal laptop. For the current users, a makeshift could be mobile phone kickstands that stick to the back of the device. Use ones that adds 4 mm or more, so that they double as feet for lying the device flat.

The OneXPlayer 2 is a bit heavy at 719g   and clunky to hold single-handed.  The heat it produces along with fan noise can also be annoying. The model we have has an APU 6800u produced on 6nm process. With the latest models with APU 7840u or 7640u, which are made on 4nm, the heat is reduced and battery life prolonged.  

Once again, the gaming industry has brought about hardware trend that also benefits us as artists. BTW, It's interesting that OneNetbook  recently announced the OneMix 5, one that looks like a mini Surface Laptop Studio that ues a "Z-fold" design, and the first video on this device on their official Bilibili channel is on painting.   Looks like they are also interesting in the digital artist market. 

We got ourselves a programmable keypad with multiple dials from Taobao for RMB 155 (USD 24). We found this one to have the highest cost-to-performance ratio among other alternatives.

Each dial has three actions : left turn,   right turn, and click. The keys uses mechanical switches. The device  can also mimic a Surface Dial. Eight layers of mappings. Supports macros. 

The software tool for setting up the keys is in Chinese only and it seems they currently only focus on the domestic market. Hopefully they would sell to global markets  soon so that you can get and use one. 

The cheapest 4K EMR pen display right now is not cheap (USD 829+).  Yet, they do not support multi-touch gesture, and are still a bit bulky.  Those who have used 2-in-1 or tablets would understand how much  I missed  touch gestures when I switch back to using a traditional EMR Pen Display from Huion or XP Pen. 

Portable displays - a    new category of device  that has emerged in recent years.   They have progressed quite a lot - you can now connect with a single USB type-C cable and have it powered entirely via the USB cable, its resolution getting up to 4K,  with touch and now pen support.   
​
What we tested here is a portable display from ehomewei  (their store at Amazon), which looks exactly like this  15.6"  pen   display branded as LUNE sold as a   kickstarter-like item  (at USD512 early bird)  in Japan. We got a model that doesn't have a G-Sensor, which allows automatic screen orientation change , from   TMall  at RMB2118 = USD332.

We tested the display with a Surface Book 2, Surface Go, Intel i5 NUC 8 and a desktop with Nvidia GTX 1060. The first three support USB type-C display out for connecting the display using just a single cable.  

They claim the screen itself is 4mm, but our measurement  reads more like 5.5mm.  Together with the stand, our measurement    reads more like 14mm instead of the claimed 10mm.  Nevertheless, it's still very thin.

The pen  it supports is an active pen complying to the Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) 2.0.   The included active pen requires AAAA battery to operate just like the Surface Pen, but you can get yourself one that uses rechargeable battery.

Tilt sensing even during hovering. Yes, this device supports pen tilt even during hover! This is something this display being better than a Surface device.  

Buttons bug.     looks like this display has some bug with button signals. We don't get an eraser signal when we press the lower side button of the included pen.   In fact, all tip and the two side buttons give button = 1 if we look at the Diagnostic page of Expresii. That means the side buttons are useless, at least for painting in Expresii. Using another MPP 2.0 pen,  we are able to button = 2 when we press the upper side button, so that means we get back the usage of at least one side button. The same pens give eraser signal and button = 2 when we press the lower and upper side buttons respectively on a Surface device, so that's definitely something the ehomewei is missing.  Testing further,  we found that some apps like Autodesk SketchBook pro gets eraser button signal, but others like Paint Tool SAI 1.2.5, Medibang Paint Pro 26.2 (v2.1.21), and Krita 4.4.5 (using Windows Ink) don't on the ehomewei.  On Surface Book 2, SAI, Medibang and Krita all respond to at least one of the side buttons of the same pens as eraser or color picker. We believe this is due to the ehomewei hardware only supporting certain pen API. Hopefully, ehomewei  can update their firmware to get this fixed in the future.

Multi-monitor.  Wacom's settings tool allows us to map the pen input to either of the monitors if you have say two monitors connected to your PC. There's no such a tool for ehomewei, but we were able to change the mapping by checking 'make this my main display' for the monitor we would like to map the pen input to in Windows 10's setting.

The screen is very bright, comparable to a Surface device.   We are unlucky to receive one that has a little dust behind the glass surface. That dust is several-pixel-wide so its quite visible.  It's rather troublesome to send it back so we may just have to live with it.   (╯_╰)

We were not able to get HDR nor 10-bit color working using  Intel iGPU Iris 655  or nvidia GTX 1060 using type-C or HDMI cable respectively. Not sure why.  They have a built-in 'UltraHDR' option, but as far as we can tell, it only makes the color too bright and saturated - which is rather useless.

We do not have any color calibration hardware  to test the gamut but as far as we can tell, colors are rather different from that of a Surface Book 2 out-of-the-box. 

Speaker is included but its sound is tiny.  Playing YouTube videos, the volume is so low that sometimes it's hard to listen to people speaking.  We asked the manufacturer if the other model's built-in G-Sensor can act like a Windows tablet's G-Sensor. The answer is no, so we can't really use it for surface tilting to direct paint flow in Expresii. ​

You can even pair the pen display with a programmable keypad with dials for a clean setup:

The host PC is an Intel " Bean Canyon " NUC 8 i5 (2018 released; 14nm) with Iris Plus 655 GPU, 8GB RAM. We used this PC because it's compact and support single-cable connection to the display. That 655 GPU is fast for Expresii at FUD display resolution but a little slow at 4K. Anyway, as you can see from the demos, it's still quite usable. If you use a  newer NUC like the latest 11th-gen with Iris Xe GPU (10nm), you should get quite a performance boost.

The drawing experience is very much like that of using a Surface device. Same pens stroking on glass surface, except you now have tilt sensing during hover. The display moves back a bit when you stroke on it,  just like using a Surface Book  in laptop mode. Using it in the 'wedge mode' is stable, but the angle is kind of fixed.  You may want to use a adjustable stand if you really want to use it extensively to paint.

Accuracy.   The cursor my be a bit off near the screen edges.  In comparison, the cursor on my Surface Book 2 follows more closely to the pen tip.

Today, there're basically two major pen sensing tech's: EMR and Active pens. Traditional pen tablet and display use EMR (the ones offered by Wacom, Huion, or XP Pen) and they usually come with thick bezels.  Active pens include all the MPP pens (like the newer pens from HP, Dell, or Lenovo ) and also those from the USI camp. They require battery and the sensing modules are usually found as computer built-in's instead of peripherals.  Wacom's EMR offers the best in terms of capabilities, as it can sense tilt even during hover, and is the only solution that can sense barrel rotation. Now, this ehomewei display offers tilt sensing during hover too and in this regard, it means you get something even better than what a Surface device gives you.   The pen is interchangeable with other Surface Pen compatibles so you have many choices from different brands.

The ehomewei display   is essentially a very thin  and bright 4K screen that comes with pen and touch input support. When we  first saw the Microsoft Surface  Studio, we wished that Microsoft would sell the pen-and-touch display separately so that we can upgrade the computer unit instead of having to replace the whole all-in-one computer. Now, this portable display is basically what we asked for.

We're not sure when this would become  available globally. ehomewei currently sells their older non-pen models on Amazon. If it does come to your country, you should give it a serious consideration.

2021.07.08 Update:  Shuen Leung reported that the ehomewei gives wobbly lines when one tries to draw straight lines slowly.   Now, we put our hope for the perfect portable pen display at the XtendTouch Pro, which is supposed to give much better diagonal straight line performance.   We can't find an actual purchase link  after their kickstarter campaign ended.  Hope they're still shipping.

The SonarPen was launched through Kickstarter in 2018.  It was primarily designed for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets as a cheap alternative to the expensive styli like the Apple Pencil. 

We actually have been in contact with  SonarPen's creator Elton Leung since 2018.   We were hoping they can add Windows support ever since. To date, there's still no Windows driver but thanks to the support from SpaceDesk, we can now use it for Windows apps too.

SpaceDesk is a software tool that allows a host machine to use other machines like tablets as its monitors.  Their ability to build a monitor wall is amazing. Recently they added support for relaying pen input too, so it's possible to use SpaceDesk as a wireless Pen Display. With SpaceDesk, we're now able to use SonarPen on Windows apps, including our Expresii that features beautiful organic digital watercolor. 

Previously, we tried   Easy Canvas Pro  (US$5 / year) and   SuperDisplay   (US$10 one time)   for Pen-Display application. Currently, we think SuperDisplay  gives the best performance among the three.  SuperDisplay  does support pen tilt, which is quite important for our app Expresii.   SpaceDesk doesn't support pen tilt nor  multi-touch gestures yet. SpaceDesk is currently free to use, while they also offer a Business license. Our current recommendation is still   SuperDisplay, which is the fastest, the most feature-complete and is inexpensive.   We look forward to SuperDisplay supporting the SonarPen.

2021.05.06 Update:  you can use USB tethering for faster connection on SpaceDesk.

What can still be added: ​It'd be great  if any of these programs can relay accelerometer/orientation sensor  readings and act as a G-Sensor  of Windows tablets so that we can directly control paper tilt in Expresii to direct the paint flow. Using other apps like  Sensor stream IMU+GPS  alongside is no good, as only one  app can be in the foreground and nowadays smartphones would have background apps dormant  after a few moments. We've tried putting the app in Battery Saving Exception or disable Battery  Optimization (on Android 9) but to no vain.

In the above video, we also show the new features of  Brush Tilt Control Pad    and   Auto Settle Timer:

You can now stack paint in the same layer by settling paint. We've also added a timer for auto-settling. You can try these new features in a beta version of Expresii, which you can enable by selecting beta option in the System>Advanced tab. Please let us know how you like them.

How does a 2020-released HP  laptop convertible perform with Expresii? We had a chance to test   an 13" HP Envy x360 with AMD 4700U APU​. The machine is compact and sleek.  It's so thin that they have the USB-A ports use an expanding door design, which you may find it a bit troublesome to use as you can't simply push a USB head straight into the port but needing to make the door fully open first. Some call a hybrid / convertible a 2-in-1 but note that this HP uses a folding design and the keyboard is not detachable like the Microsoft Surface Pro for it to be truly a thin tablet. 

The HP machine does run hot when if we continuously make strokes for a while. However, the hot part resides in the bottom side near the hinge, which we won't touch normally.  We are pleased by the APU performance, which gives 100+ FPS on the laptop's FHD screen resolution.   Our unit has 8GB of RAM.

 Having tried the RENAISSER   Raphael 520,   the HP tilt Pen feels less sensitive on the initial activation force.  You have to press a bit harder in order for the lines to get registered.  The HP tilt Pen feels solid with its metal body.  The USB type-C charging port is hidden in a sliding door. 

The HP tilt pen doesn't have a   soft tip like found in the Raphael 520 or the MS Surface pen. When used on the glossy screen of the HP machine, it feels slippery. This could be the reason why you see the lines in our tests are wobbly.

Overall, we think the HP Envy x360 is a solid machine, but for better art making, we recommend replacing the included (included at least in our local market) HP tilt pen with cheap  but more sensitive   Surface pen alternatives (they are all compatible under the MPP 2.0 protocol), and you will have a great drawing experience. 

There's also 15" sibling models   if you need a bit larger display. Currently, we don't recommend the Intel integrated GPU models, since there's an issue with Intel GPU artwork exporting, so make sure you pick up the model with an AMD or Nvidia GPU.  There's also newer 2021 models with AMD 5000 series APU announced last month that you can already   buy now .

2020 went too quickly. No travel. In fact, our activities were mostly confined in our neighborhood.​  Nevertheless, the development of Expresii never stopped. Just check our Update Log for a (truncated) list of what have been done.  

Have been collaborating with a small team of animators this year on a short film Find Find , whose production started in March.  It serves as an experiment for how Expresii can be used for animation. We are developing a system that can automatically control the brush (and other attributes like color loading) in Expresii to produce a sequence of animation frames.  This lays a ground for modern ink-painting animation  (水墨動畫). Click the octopus below to watch an illustrative video.

The animation is set to premiere  in mid-2021.   

In mid-2020, it's been proven that Expresii can run on an Intel-based Mac via Parallels Desktop 15 or later, complete with Apple Pencil support (with pressure and tilt) via Sidecar, but the save / export function of Expresii was not working  due to limitation of Parallels' OpenGL implementation. Since version 2020.11.01, we updated Expresii to overcome this limitation so that it can now run  fully via Parallels. So, yeah, apart from running Expresii via Bootcamp, you can now run it directly from within MacOS via Parallels. 

However, it seems Apple is ditching Intel processors for future Mac's in flavor of their own ARM-based processors. For Expresii to run on ARM,  a crucial part from Microsoft is the support of  OpenGL 3.3+ for Windows on ARM. They have good progress on this, citing   in November   an   Insider version of the compatibility package  that one can test with.  Since one can already   run Windows on ARM on Apple's new M1-based machines, it's quite possible we can run Expresii on ARM-based Apple hardware. 

Those of you having an ARM-based machine can try Windows on ARM (if on Apple M1, here's an   installation guide) and get the   Insider preview     of the OpenGL 3.3 package to try Expresii there already. For those of you hoping to run it via   Parallels,  Parallels just released a   tech preview  in which you can run Windows on ARM as virtual machine  on an M1 Apple machines. So for those of you having a Parallels 16 license, you can already try it.   If you do try them, let me know how it goes!  

2021-04 Update:   Yes, Expresii  runs on Windows 10 ARM version via Parallels 16.5 on Apple Silicon M1 machine!

In March 2020, we got a call from Taiwanese company Ufro.  Their CEO would like us to support their new color-picking mechanism, in preparation for the then-upcoming Lenovo E-Color Pen. We're happy to help. In July this E-Color Pen started to hit the market, and we did some demos for it. Expresii became the only app that can show off this E-Color Pen with gorgeous  color blending effects. 

In May, we added support for on-the-fly adjustment of loading color hue, lightness & saturation via hotkeys in Expresii.   More pen tablet makers are adding dials to their hardware and we also showed you can use those dials for real-time  color adjustment  by assigning the dial to our hotkeys. 

We have been in contact with other hardware makers  too.  Would reveal more when collaborations come to fruition.

Since February, the file size of an Expresii artwork file and in-memory storage size are significantly reduced.   In October, the artwork export rendering implementation is replaced with one that is more amenable to having more layers.  In December, artwork  rendering is also optimized to up to 50% faster (or  80% for a bit lower quality). These path the way  to allowing more layers  or future enhancements. 

Sorry for the lack of a roadmap thus far.   Since the internal of Expresii is much more complex than ordinary paint programs, it takes more effort to design and implement stuffs.  Quite some users still don't have a good GPU and without  a good GPU, we have to be economical when using GPU resources. Now that hardware has improved and capable GPUs are more common in new machines, we'd like to update Expresii to allow better experience given more available GPU compute and memory   resources.

Suminagashi is a form of marbling.  In October, we   gave a preview   of our implementation in Expresii and we passed it to our trusted user Shuen Leung, and she produced the following artwork:

There is still some more work to be done before we can release it to the public. Let us know how you like it so far.

I know many of you find it hard to paint when the paint never really dries and needing to use a new layer for sharp overlapping shapes.   That would change soon. 

With those optimizations mentioned above, we're ready to add support for more layers.

We'll start adding Western watercolor specific features like drips, backruns or granulation.

Some of you were asking for image import.  With that above-mentioned dry-up change, import would be possible.

Our Nelson Chu has been thinking about how to do even better than what he did for oil paint simulation in  Fresh Paint (Project Gustav) . Hopefully, we can come up with a good solution in the coming year following Western watercolor.

We already have an initial implementation of the RYB color model. This makes the colors look more natural, but it actually narrows the range of possible colors you can get. The greys become kind of sepia. 

Existing customers will get these enhancements for free.  So, you don't need to wait if you want to purchase Expresii now.  ​ (^人^)

​If you like what we're doing, please support this endeavor by buying the app (or giving a tip by paying for a trial key) and tell your friends who might be interested.  Everything counts!     Thanks you!      m(_    _)m 

Apart from Duet Display  Pro,  there's also Easy Canvas Pro from DEVGURU Co.  in   Korea that allows you to use your iOS or Android device as pen display to your desktop apps.  Yes, it's like connecting a Cintiq to your desktop, but you have the option to go either wired or wireless.  You can use a tablet like   the iPad or  the   Samsung Tab S3   or even your Samsung Note 10 phone.  It'd be  a great solution if you already own one of those devices.

We just tested  their newly released   EasyCanvas Pro for Android . I own a Samsung Note 8 with S Pen, which supports both pressure and tilt, so I used it in this test.  Normally, you should use a tablet instead since a phone's screen is very small for painting.

I found the wired connection gives satisfactory performance. When using 2.4GHz wifi, the delay is rather noticeable.   Unfortunately, I don't have a 5GHz router here so I can't test 5GHz   performance. The Samsung device shows the 2.4GHz wifi  giving 144Mbps, while my test desktop is connected to the wireless router via cable.  My desktop screen is at 4k and my phone is set at FHD+, so Easy Canvas has to resample the 4k screen capture and that's another source of latency.   

We hope DEVGURU can support G-Sensor data and hover in the future.   G-Sensor can be used for surface tilt to direct the paint flow, and hover is good for users to see the pen posture before hitting the paper. This is important for Eastern calligraphy, if not for painting in general.

It has been one year since the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 was released.   We got ourselves an i7 model to test with. We've had it for about a month now and it has been very responsive.

The following is a quick test on its performance. As you can see, it allows fluid digital watercolor in Expresii. In case you can't afford the i7 model, you can still get by with the i5 model, but  you may want to use the   Fast Mode   for more responsiveness.

Did some calligraphy test too:

Don't have the original Surface Pen with us right now, so we picked up a Surface Pen alternative in these tests. 

Finally  we'd like to show you some sneak peek at some latest development in   ink-painting-style animation (水墨動畫) that we are working on.   Follow our animator collaborator's Instagram  to learn more. Their work is so cool & cute at the same time!

​And yes, Surface Pro is used in producing this animation, in case you wonder.   ​​(・ωｰ)～☆