Question

I’m trying to write an application that can be used to create pictures that look like paintings using simulated brush strokes. Are there any good sources for simple ways of simulating brush strokes? For example, given a list of mouse positions that the user has dragged the mouse through, a brush width and a brush texture, how do I determine what to draw to the canvas?

I’ve tried angling the brush texture in the direction of the mouse movement and dabbing several brush texture images along the path, but it doesn’t look great. I think I’m missing something where the brush texture should shrink and grow on corners.

Any simple to follow links would be appreciated. I’ve found complex academic papers on simulating e.g. oil paints but I just want a basic algorithm to use that produces OK results if possible.

Answer 1

There’s a large literature on Non-Photorealist Rendering. The main books are
“Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics” by Strothotte & Schlechtweg and
“Non-photorealistic Rendering” by Gooch & Gooch. They discuss brush strokes.
There are several of papers that deal with simulated brush strokes.
See for instance “Simulating Artistic Brushstrokes Using Interval Splines“.