Some explanations

One or two "artists" have told me something like that: "Hey, why are you doing that? I can do everything you show in your page." So I would like to say some a little bit obvious things.

Everybody involved in deep with Computer Graphics knows every limits concerning results are already broken. Nowadays there are hardwares and softwares for any CG work you need. EVERYTHING can be drawed/rendered/done. The points are:
1) who have skills to made a specific CG task?
2) how hard is it?
3) how much does it cost?

This page don't intend to show to a professional designer things he can't do. Everything can be done, I'm tired of know that.

I believe free CG software world still deserves more good programs. Of course, big softwares will have a lot of overlapping concerning functionalities, but it's normal and help to shake the market. If someone discover a different way to make something, good for all. In CG usually there are several ways to make a task. People even use 2D tricks to get 3D like results and also use 3D tools to make things that looks make directly in 2D. The possibilities and combinations are infinite.

There are some people researching to improve CG tasks some way the can be done with less skills, time and money. I'm one of this people. I intend, for example, to make a lot of one click effects/filters.

I really believe every new free software, even a very simple one, is an improvement in the tech world. Different people make software differently, and what is different will be an improvement for somebody.

No CG user can push me down. Only who makes better what I make can do some kinds of critics.

Artistic Effects for text

Make your own cloud text right now. You can get the most impressive text effects using Picture to People text effect generator. No design skills needed.

Continuing the examples about my researches "not canonically vector based", I brought back a very interesting library I coded years ago. A library for make procedurally calculated text drawings.

I created math models for render procedural materials having a font outline as directional field. The results can be beautiful and make a lot of sense for use in a suitable context. The image above, for example, could be very interesting in a site about airplanes, nature or weather (of course the rendered word would not be "Text").

The screenshots show results of a particular model developed to render text made of clouds.

If I receive enough asks, I will make a special page concerning most of my "nature mimic" effects for text.

Artistic effects for photography

As promised, I'm posting here something not so "vector based".

I dedicated a good time years ago to create artistic effects, some more suitable for photos, some better for text.

My intention is give to P2P a large (really large) menu of effects/filters. Many of them are the classical effects that all professional raster CG software has, but all my effects will be there too.

The figure above shows one of my effects that try to transform a photo in a image that looks like "drawed or painted by human hands". The thumbnail inside shows the original photo modified by the math model I created.

Just vectors?

A lot of people has been asking me about the "duality" of my software: raster & vector based tools. People say they see here almost only drawing and vector stuff.

In fact, in the very beginning of my researches years ago, I was a specialist in raster filters/effects, most of them artistic for photos or text. But, since 2007, I focused in the vector based libraries of my software.

Anyway, soon I will try to put here one or two posts about the raster effects I have already created. This way people will have some idea of what I'm talking about.

Vectorization 2

My vectorization library is very powerful now. I made it for easy use without math knowledge, since progressive application of vectorization can give results as smooth as desired.

The priority in development was always remove aliases (false border information) and keep all true image detail.

First picture shows the original bitmap in low resolution. Second picture shows the raster representation of vectorized image using same size. The vector based image was created by direct application of vectorization model over the first image.

Of course, the better resolution of bitmap image, the better the vectorized image, but in fact it's no so simple like that. If you have interest about some intuitive explanation about how it works and how you can affect the final result, take a look at my special page about vectorization. It will get better step by step and soon it will have nice and useful information.

Vectorization

I'm developing my solution for "bitmap to vector" transformations.

The bigger challenge is a good conjugation between two conflicting goals:
1) smooth and beautiful results;
2) avoiding lost of significant details.

It's not easy to find a common point: for some images a kind of pattern can be just noise and for others it can be part of important details.

I'm considering some possible solutions dealing with topology and entropy.

Picture shows some initial tests. Typographical use is the canonical example, but of course the tool is generic.

Bitmaps to vector based images

Despite the hard work concerning the creation of a completely new renderer (new paradigms, new models, new algorithms), I started to model, project and code my tools for transforming raster images in vector based ones.

I'm still planning ... I don't know what degree of configuration I will offer for this functionality.

It is in the very beginning, but I hope I can show some screenshot next week.

Thick line styles in action

I'm still having hard work trying to create my models/algorithms for fast anti-aliased drawing. Anyway, I have improved my old renderer as promised.

Now thick lines can have different junction styles depending just on configuration.

For some shapes, the results can be sensibly different. The picture shows a kind of star drawn using all line styles my rasterizer offers.