Painting with Triangles

NPAR 2014, Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering, August 2014

Mark D. Benjamin, Stephen DiVerdi, Adam Finkelstein

Left: A vector painting made in our system exhibits both smooth gradients painted by soft brushes as well as infinitely sharp boundaries painted by hard brushes. Middle: The painting is represented by a planar triangle mesh. Right: Closeup showing the bottom of the letter B reveals both the sharp boundaries on the white region and a smooth gradient from blue to green in the background.

Although vector graphics offer a number of benefits, conventional vector painting programs offer only limited support for the traditional painting metaphor. We propose a new algorithm that translates a user’s mouse motion into a triangle mesh representation. This triangle mesh can then be composited onto a canvas containing an existing mesh representation of earlier strokes. This representation allows the algorithm to render solid colors and linear gradients. It also enables painting at any resolution. This paradigm allows artists to create complex, multi-scale drawings with gradients and sharp features while avoiding pixel sampling artifacts.

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Mark D. Benjamin, Stephen DiVerdi, and Adam Finkelstein.
"Painting with Triangles."
NPAR 2014, Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering, August 2014.

@inproceedings{Benjamin:2014:PWT,
   author = "Mark D. Benjamin and Stephen DiVerdi and Adam Finkelstein",
   title = "Painting with Triangles",
   booktitle = "NPAR 2014, Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on
      Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering",
   year = "2014",
   month = aug
}