Researches about hair and fur drawing

Picture to People libraries are getting more and more advanced and complicated. Since some time ago, I'm researching about new realistic techniques to render some nature structures like fur and hair.

I'm developing my own exclusive algorithms and I have already got some advances. I could already create some code able to generate interesting fur and hair patterns.

Below you can see a letter "a" rendered by using the model I already researched to produce fur. There still are a long way to a production level software to create 3D fur text effects, but the effort has been worthy so far.

My algorithms don't cheat like some desktop graphic softwares that use brushes to create this kind of effect. The piece above was drawn using thousands of vector based hair structures created from scratch in rendering pipeline.

 Subscribe in a reader

How to draw photos using text

I have published a new software focused on creating typographic photo effects. In other words, this effect generator can recreate photos by using text.

P2P already had an online typography effect, but this one is more modern, more configurable and able to create different results.

This new photo typographic effect maker has features like:
- optional input image improvement;
- anti-aliased text drawing;
- several composition styles;
- many font to choose;
- good original information preservation.

Below you see two examples (click to enlarge):

Turn your best photos into typographic pictures by using the Photo Typography Effect Generator now.

 Subscribe in a reader

Inspiration: the best graffiti text effects

Picture to People site has a page called The Best Graffiti Text Effects. It's a nice place to you see many amazing samples of what our Graffiti Text tool can make.

Using a so powerful software can be a little tricky, so it could be important to read the good tips at the renderer page. There are many options to configure if you want, but you can learn them in few time if you follow that suggestions. Furthermore, I hope soon I can post some tutorials about graffiti effects at the blog about text effects.

Feel inspired by so many good graffiti text examples and start creating your own graffiti right now! You can get astonishing realistic 3D effects.

Subscribe in a reader

Maccala improvement: Curves simplification again

The first implementation I did for curves optimization was good, but not good enough. In very extreme situations, the algorithm could fail, so the result of simplification was a curve with a different shape from its original form.

After some more hard work, I could finally develop an algorithm that I was not able to make fail, even when simplifying the more bizarre font faces I have ever found in my whole life.

Below I show some more tests made using even more weird and complex fonts than the ones tried before. It's never easy, but my vector drawing library is getting more and more powerful.

Subscribe in a reader

Maccala improvement: Curves optimization

Picture to People Project has the best and biggest set of text effects around the Internet and much more will be released yet. It was possible just because our software haa a strong foundation: our low level libraries are powerful and are constantly upgraded.

These days I have been improving Maccala again. The vector based rendering engine is receiving an important optimization: an algorithm able to make curve simplification with almost zero quality lost. The main advantages this technique will bring are:

- reduced memory usage for curves/fonts representation;
- faster 2D curve drawing;
- faster set operations over polygons;
- faster 2D font rendering;
- faster 3D text rendering.

In fact, my biggest motivation to make this right now is to help to accelerate the realistic 3D text renderer I'm developing, but many vector based P2P tools will benefit from that.

Most time I use the font rendering engine to test this optimization. If the algorithm can simplify strange fonts with no visible quality loss, so I can suppose it's working correctly.

Since I'm very excited about this improvement, I show below some examples about what it can do and how it works. Each image shows the simplification of an "a" letter of a different font. At left, you can see the points representation and at right the generated drawing.

The tiny black dots are the points used to create the character; the black continuous curves regions usually are dozens or even hundreds of points very close to each other and they just happen in the non-simplified (top-left) chars. What is important here is: when a simplified "a" is drawn, it has the same looking than the non-simplified one, so the quality decreasing is negligible. The simplification has been made to be a nondestructive process.

Subscribe in a reader

Maccala improvement: Polygon filling modes

During these last years, this blog showed the development of my 2D drawing library called Maccala. I really passed through many problems and challenges since I started it more than four years ago.

Nowadays I have a very comprehensive, professional, powerful and robust library for 2D drawing, font rendering and vector based effects, but I knew it had a point to be solved: the polygon filling modes. Since its first days, the library had only the alternative filling mode. I always knew about this weakness, but I have let it behind, since its only mode always was enough to my needs until now.

Currently I'm developing a new sub-library especially to make typography effects. At this point, the lack of another filling mode became a barrier to creation of my new effects.

I'm (finally) implementing the winding filling mode in Maccala. Since it's more complex by nature, I'm taking a big care about performance, so I can draw using any filling mode with no (or very few) performance penalty.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, let's put it simple: the winding mode can be imperative when filling some kinds of polygons that have self-intersection. This kind of polygon is very common, mainly when you make some operations like polyline thickness widening.

Below there is a simple example. First I show a self-intersected polygon. Second I show the same polygon filled using the alternative mode. As you can see, a colateral effect of this technique is that, in this case, the polygon is not completely filled. Finally I show the winding mode applied to our polygon. It has the behavior we usually want in this situation: the polygon is totally filled.

Subscribe in a reader

Typography books

Very often people send me emails asking about fonts and typography. Many times they have simple questions more related to font styles and usages, but I don't have time to answer everybody.

So I decided to give here a more general tip: I will suggest the best introductory books about typography I have read so far. Usually they focus on a design point of view.

Here is the book list in random order:

* The Complete Manual of Typography - James Felici;
* The Elements of Typographic Style - Robert Bringhurst;
* Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs) - Ellen Lupton;
* Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography - James Craig, William Bevington, Irene Korol Scala;

Hope you enjoy.

Subscribe in a reader

Turning photos into text

The new Picture to People tool doesn't work only for simple images. You can even draw your favorite photos with text.

Usually it's a good idea use high contrast pictures. If you need, pre-process your photos before applying the effect. The pre-processing can be made using the Picture to People image editor.

Below I show an example about what the Typographic Photo effect can make.

Subscribe in a reader

Drawing images using text

Since I started releasing Picture to People tools online, people have been asking for a tool to draw pictures with text.

I have finally created this renderer and it's already online. It tries to keep the original image information as much as possible, and there is a configuration parameter to inform if you want prioritize the input image contours or the font rendering.

There are many font faces to choose from and you can draw even complex photos. It's a good idea to use good contrast input images.

Below I show an example of an input image and its drawing made of text.

Subscribe in a reader

A tool to mix photos and typography

I stopped developing my light library for a while.

I have seen some artworks a couple days ago that inspired me to create a new cool effect. This new one involves photos and typography too.

I'm developing it nowadays and I'm really excited about that. I'm sure this new Picture to People tool will be useful for a lot of people in many situations.

As the programming evolves, I will show here some results and examples.

Subscribe in a reader

Talking about Text Effects

Since I released the new Picture to People Text Generator, people have been asking a lot about text effects.

Now I have a place to talk specially about artistic texts. There I will show, discuss, give examples, tips e suggestions, always concerning easy and smart ways to get great text results. This way, I can let this blog to go back to its origins: post mainly about my new Computer Graphics developments.

By now, this new text effects corner is only showing some examples about what you can have from the new Text Generator with no design skills. It's just to prepare your mood. Soon I will post there many tips and ideas to help you getting awesome texts with very few effort.

Subscribe in a reader

Next challenging library: a font rendering engine

Now I'm working in an engine to render texts from scratch (from TTF fonts) with arbitrary vector based transformations.

Believe or not, it's a VERY hard task. The reason is not the transformations by themselves; the development of a complete font engine is a very complex goal.

In next posts, I will explain superficially why typography is a hard subject (despite the normal problems concerning professional Computer Graphics).

This library is one of the last low level tools I will need to create to use in a new and ambitious high level library. For now, let's keep it like a surprise.

Subscribe in a reader