Smoke Brush

Abstract

Non-Photorealistic Rendering covers a wide range of visual effects, and much work has been dedicated to create digital representations of traditional media --- either through artist controls or programmatically. We explore a variation of this work, which aims to create digital media that takes the metaphors of traditional media but applies them in ways that have no physical equivalent --- thus expanding notions of what digital media can represent. Smoke Brush is a system for applying smoke-like brush strokes to a digital canvas. Using Smoke Brush, artists can add animated, constrained smoke effects to existing pictures or create images represented entirely by smoke. Our drawing system produces artifacts that are realized as animated gifs --- a commonly available digital format used in cinemagraphs. We also describe a technique that produces smooth continuous motion in these looped animations that is faithful to the original artist input.