Peter Vandoren

IntuPaint: Bridging the gap between physical and digital painting

This paper presents a novel interface for a digital paint system: IntuPaint. A tangible interface for a digital paint easel, using an interactive surface and electronic brushes with a tuft of bristles, has been developed. The flexible brush bristles conduct light by means of total internal reflection inside the individual bristles. This enables to capture subtle paint nuances of the artist in a way that was not possible in previous technologies. This approach provides natural interaction and enables detailed tracking of specific brush strokes. Additional tangible and finger-based input techniques allow for specific paint operations or effects. IntuPaint also offers an extensive model-based paint simulation, rendering realistic paint results. The reality-based approach in the combination of user interface and paint software is a new step forward to bridge the gap between physical and digital painting, as is demonstrated by initial user tests.

FluidPaint: an interactive digital painting system using real wet brushes

This paper presents FluidPaint, a novel digital paint system using real wet brushes. A new interactive canvas, accurately registering brush footprints and paint strokes in high precision has been developed. It is based on the real-time imaging of brushes and other painting instruments as well as the real-time co-located rendering of the painting results. This new painting user interface enhances the user experience and the artists expressiveness. User tests demonstrate the intuitive nature of FluidPaint, naturally integrating interface elements of traditional painting in a digital paint system.

Dip - it: digital infrared painting on an interactive table

In this paper we report on our work to develop a novel input technique for a digital paint system. Using a brush with infrared (IR) light emitting fibers, we were able to create a natural paint interface on an interactive table. This IR-brush adds two important properties to our paint environment: haptic feedback and an accurate brush footprint. The modified brush approaches the haptic feedback of the traditional paint brush. The use of IR-light in the brush enables tracking the contact area of the brush on the interactive table. Informal usability tests show that our digital paint environment offers an intuitive interface and contributes to an enhanced user experience in digital painting.

Multimodal Interaction in a Collaborative Virtual Brainstorming Environment

In this paper we present our work in setting up a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) framework which is built to support collaborative creative meetings for geographically dispersed participants. Similar to real life, we rely on the use of quick drawings or sketches as a means of communication to convey new ideas, thoughts or other meta-data to other individuals. Furthermore, we concentrate on facilitating the (collaborative) interaction process through the use of four modalities. The first modality is direct manipulation, which is suit-able for direct interaction with the networked environment. Secondly, we look at interaction through gesturing symbols in order not to distract the user’s attention from the meeting. As a third modality we consider interaction through menu and widget manipulation. A fourth modality is established by a camera interface.We expect that the combination of the intuitive interface and the real-time visualisation of the virtual environment leads to a better understanding and realisation of one’s ideas in an early phase of the cooperation.

Smart camera SoC system for interactive real-time real-brush based digital painting systems

Advanced digital paint systems, based on accurate simulation models for the paint, brush and canvas interaction enable a virtual painting environment familiar to artists, but also allow for new ways of expressivity. The new FluidPaint co-located real-brush-input & canvas-display systems put extremely high demands on the real-time image processing and the reaction time between brush strokes and the rendering of the painting result on the screen. A new Smart Camera System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture is presented enabling real-time input of brush-strokes with real brushes in the FluidPaint digital painting system.

Exploring Whole-Hand Gestures in a Tabletop Environment for Urban Modeling

Touch-based tabletop interaction with virtual environments (VEs) is a recent research interest. In particular, 3D navigation and object interaction on tabletops pose considerable research challenges given the flat, rectangular two-dimensional workspace of an interactive tabletop. This paper explores the design of whole-hand gestures for urban modeling on an interactive, tilted tabletop system. These touch-based gestures fit a hybrid 2D/3D approach for navigation and object interaction in urban city modeling. In a formal user study the proposed whole-hand gestural interface was compared to a finger-based equivalent. The evaluation results reveal appreciation for aspects of the interaction concept, also illustrating the need for further tuning of the interaction concept and the input tracking.

Smart Camera System-on-Chip Architecture for Real-Time Brush Based Interactive Painting Systems

Interactive virtual paint systems are very useful in editing all kinds of graphics artwork. Because of the digital tracking of strokes, interactive editing operations such as save, redo, resize etc. are possible. The structure of artwork generated can be used for animation in artwork cartoons. A novel System-on-Chip Smart Camera architecture is presented that can be used for tracking infrared fiber based brushes as well as real brushes in real-time. A dedicated SoC hardware implementation avoids unnecessary latency delays caused by PC based architectures, that require communication-, PC and GPU frame-buffer delays, thereby considerably enhancing the interactivity experience. The system is prototyped on an FPGA.