Next Level Paint Simulations Are Coming! 🎨🖌️

Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute  Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér. As you see, this is not our usual intro.   Why is that? Because today we are going   simulate the process of real painting  on a computer, and we’ll find out that   all previous techniques mix paint incorrectly,  and finally, and create this beautiful image. Now, there are plenty of previous  techniques that help us paint   digitally, so, why do we  need a new paper for this? Well, believe it or not, these previous methods  think differently about the shape that the   paint has to take, the more sophisticated  ones even simulate the diffusion of paint,   which is fantastic. They all do these things a  little differently, but they agree on one thing.    And, here comes the problem. The one thing  they agree on is that blue plus yellow equals   a creamy color. But, wait a second… let’s  actually try this. Many of you know already what   is coming…of course. In real life, blue plus  yellow is not a creamy color, it is green.    Does the new method know this?   Yes it does! But only this one. And we can try the similar experiments over and  over and over again. The results are the same. So, how is this even possible? Does no one  know that blue plus yellow equals green?    Well, of course they know, but a  proper simulation of pigments mixing   is very challenging. For instance, it requires  keeping track of pigment concentrations, and   we also have to simulate subsurface  scattering, which is the absorption   and scattering of light within a volume of  these pigments. In some critical applications,   just this part can take several hours to days  to compute for a challenging case. And now,   hold on to your papers, because this new technique  can do all this correctly, and in real time. I   loved this visualization as it is really dense  in information, and super easy to read at the   same time. That is quite a challenge, and in my  opinion, just this one figure could win an award   by itself. As you see, most of the time, it runs  easily with 60, or higher frames per second,   and even in the craziest cases, it can compute all  this about 30 times per second. That is insanity. So, what do we get for all this effort? A  more realistic digital painting experience.    For instance, with the new method, color  mixing now feels absolutely amazing,   and if we feel like applying a ton of paint  and let it stain the paper, we get something   much more lifelike too. Artists who try this  will appreciate these a great deal I am sure. Especially that the authors also made this paint  color mixing technique available for everyone,   free of charge. As we noted, computing this kind  of paint mixing simulation is not easy, however,   using the final technique is, on the other  hand, extremely easy. As easy as it gets. If   you feel like coding up a simulation and include  this method in it, this is all you need to do.    Very few paper implementations are this simple to  use. It conceals all the mathematical difficulties   away from you. Extra point for elegance,  and, huge congratulations to the authors! Now, after nearly every Two Minute  Papers episode where we showcase   such an amazing paper, I get a question saying  something like “okay, but when do I get to see   or use this in the real world? ”. And rightfully  so, that is a good question. For instance,   this previous GauGAN paper was  published in 2019, and here we are,   just a bit more than 2 years later, and it  has been transferred into a real product. Some machine learning papers also made it to  Tesla’s self driving cars in one or two years,   so tech transfer from research to real products  is real. But, is it real with this technique?    Yes it is! So much so that it is already available   in an app name Rebelle 5, which offers a  next level digital painting experience.    It even simulates different kinds  of papers and how they absorb paint.    A paper simulation you say? Yes, here, at Two  Minute Papers, we appreciate that a great deal. If you use this to paint something, please  make sure to leave a comment or tweet at me.    I would love to see your scholarly  paintings! What a time to be alive!

Thanks for watching and for your generous  support, and I'll see you next time!