Mimicking Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines

In applications such as architecture, early design sketches containing accurate line drawings often mislead the target audience [Schumann et al., 1996]. Approximate human-drawn sketches are typically accepted as a better way of demonstrating fundamental design concepts. To this end we have designed an algorithm that creates lines that perceptually resemble human-drawn lines. Our algorithm works directly with input point data and a physically-based mathematical model of human arm movement. Our algorithm generates unique lines of arbitrary length given the end points of a line, without relying on a database of human-drawn lines. We found that an observational analysis obtained through various user studies of human lines made a bigger impact on the algorithm than a statistical analysis. Additional studies have shown that the algorithm produces lines that are perceptually indistinguishable from that of a hand-drawn straight pencil line. A further expansion to the system resulted in mimicked dashed lines.

Paper download: (7.3 MB)

Award:

The conference paper was selected as one of the best papers of Computational Aesthetics 2008.

Poster (presented at NPAR 2008):

Additional material:

slides of the short presentation at NPAR 2008 (PDF, 0.4MB)

Main Reference:

Zainab AlMeraj, Brian Wyvill, Tobias Isenberg, Amy Gooch, and Richard Guy (2009) Automatically Mimicking Unique Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines. Computers & Graphics, 33(4):496–508, August 2009.

BibTeX entry:



@ARTICLE{Meraj:2009:AMU,
  author      = {Zainab AlMeraj and Brian Wyvill and Tobias Isenberg and Amy Gooch and Richard Guy},
  title       = {Automatically Mimicking Unique Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines},
  journal     = {Computers \& Graphics},
  year        = {2009},
  volume      = {33},
  number      = {4},
  month       = aug,
  pages       = {496--508},
  doi         = {10.1016/j.cag.2009.04.004},
  doi_url     = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2009.04.004},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Meraj2008MHD},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Meraj_2009_AMU.pdf},
}

Other References:

Zainab Meraj, Brian Wyvill, Tobias Isenberg, Amy Gooch, and Richard Guy (2008) Mimicking Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines. In Paul Brown, Douglas W. Cunningham, Victoria Interrante, and Jon McCormack, eds., Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging (CAe, June 18–20, Lisbon, Portugal). Eurographics Association, Goslar, Germany, pages 73–80, 2008. Selected as one of the best papers of CAe 2008, also see the extended article in Computers & Graphics.

BibTeX entry:



@INPROCEEDINGS{Meraj:2008:MHD,
  author      = {Zainab Meraj and Brian Wyvill and Tobias Isenberg and Amy Gooch and Richard Guy},
  title       = {Mimicking Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines},
  booktitle   = {Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging (CAe, June 18--20, Lisbon, Portugal)},
  OPTeditor   = {Paul Brown and Douglas W. Cunningham and Victoria Interrante and Jon McCormack},
  year        = {2008},
  pages       = {73--80},
  publisher   = {Eurographics Association},
  address     = {Goslar, Germany},
  doi         = {10.2312/COMPAESTH/COMPAESTH08/073-080},
  doi_url     = {https://doi.org/10.2312/COMPAESTH/COMPAESTH08/073-080},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Meraj2008MHD},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Meraj_2008_MHD.pdf},
}

Zainab Meraj, Brian Wyvill, Tobias Isenberg, Amy Gooch, and Richard Guy (2008) Mimicking Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines. In Ken Anjyo and Pascal Barla, eds., Poster and Animation Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR, June 9–11, Annecy, France)., page 9, 2008. Extended abstract and poster, please see the article in Computers & Graphics.

BibTeX entry:



@INPROCEEDINGS{Meraj:2008:MHP,
  author      = {Zainab Meraj and Brian Wyvill and Tobias Isenberg and Amy Gooch and Richard Guy},
  title       = {Mimicking Hand-Drawn Pencil Lines},
  booktitle   = {Poster and Animation Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR, June 9--11, Annecy, France)},
  OPTeditor   = {Ken Anjyo and Pascal Barla},
  year        = {2008},
  pages       = {9},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Meraj2008MHD},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Meraj_2008_MHP.pdf},
}

This work was done at and in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Victoria, Canada.