System and Method for Natural Media Painting Using Automatic Brush Cleaning and Filling Modes

Abstract

Systems, methods, and apparatus for simulating natural media painting in a digital painting application (or painting simulation module) may provide an automatic brush cleaning feature and an automatic brush filling feature, which may be separately selectable by a user. When enabled, these features may cause the digital painting application (or simulation module) to automatically clean a virtual paint brush (e.g., by emptying both a reservoir buffer and a pickup buffer of a brush model) and/or automatically fill the virtual paint brush with paint (e.g., by storing data representing paint in the reservoir buffer) between brush strokes. These automated actions may be performed in response to detecting the completion of a brush stroke, or in response to detecting the initiation of a next brush stroke. Settings for these automated actions may be overridden by initiating manual brush cleaning and/or filling operations between strokes (e.g., following any automated actions that are enabled).

Description

PRIORITY INFORMATION[0001]This application claims benefit of priority of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 247,366 entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Simulating Natural Media Painting in Digital Media” filed Sep. 30, 2009, the content of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.BACKGROUNDDescription of the Related Art[0002]One component of the simulation of real natural media paint is the method by which paint moves between the brush and the canvas. There are a number of highly visible effects that depend on this interaction, and in order to provide a high-fidelity recreation of real paint strokes, this interaction should be accurately reproduced. Real natural paint media with thick paints such as oil paints, acrylics, gouache, etc., exhibit a variety of different behaviors that are important aspects of how painters achieve their results. Many of these behaviors come from the fact that paint deposition by a brush on a canvas is not a one-way transfer—that is...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]Various embodiments of systems, methods, and apparatus for simulating natural media painting in a digital painting application (or simulation module thereof) are described. The methods described herein may be more intuitive for the artist, and also more easi

Problems solved by technology

This results in the dirtying of strokes as a brush passes through wet paint on the canvas.

Another effect of real natural media painting is the drying out of the paint on the brush during a stroke, which may result in streaky marks.

By this method, the surface could become dirty from the canvas, but could also be replenished by the reservoir, which could eventually run out of paint to cause dry strokes.

However, a limitation of Baxter's technique is that paint moves between the layers with a constant flow rate.

However, these conventional painting simulation tools typically do not mix or blend the colors on the canvas with the colors in the brush.

In addition, conventional painting simulation tools do not provide intuitive methods to control the manner in which the colors are mixed or the length of stroke that can be made.

As the paint on the canvas is often not all the same color, the physical paint brush may have paint of different colors loaded non-uniformly among and along each of the bristles.

These requirements add complexity to the workflow of a digital brush and make unclear the requirements of an ideal user interface mechanism that would both allow the organic experience of using a real paint brush and provide the flexibility of a digital paint brush.

However, in conventional painting simulation tools, these options tend

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