george koller on fri 19 nov 99
gail sheffield wrote:
> Mr. Koller:
>
> I never did quite understand your software/machine setup for
decorating
> tiles, but it interests me. Can you explain it in non-technical (both
for
> the machine and computer aspects) terms? And whether the price/cost
you
> have suggested will fall in the future? Thanks.
>
> Gail Sheffield
> Covington, LA
Gail,
Communicating what I am doing with this software is
not easy for me. This has been rewritten and rewritten
and I have no clue if it will be very helpful. There are
just some things that have to be explained, I think. What goes
into my software is an IMAGE and what comes out are
INSTRUCTIONS for a machine, please keep that as
"anchor" points as I fill in some of the details between.
The INSTRUCTIONS are like a paper tape loop
for an old player piano. Only we control a machine that
positions tools. And the TOOLS can be simple scribe
points, or as high techy as a Laser. ALL our work to
this time has been with a rotating diamond burr - like
a dremel TOOL. It merely ASSISTS us, not unlike if
you found a masking system that works (a little magically).
For all previous work our one trick has been to REMOVE
MATERIAL, but we are now positioned to add two new
tricks.
I'm going to use an analogy that I never used before and I
hope it works for you. I will also indulge in talking a bit
about what software is about and even how it works because
I think this may help you see the "place" where this software
I have developed "fits" into the bigger picture. I have designed
it all to work specifically with clay after several years of
working with tiles.....
======
Modern software supports a building module called an
"Object". This allows computers to do more work
for us programmers. These software building blocks are
rather like the blocks of clay used in a sculpture of an artist
and I have been sculpturing for several years on this - it
is not completely trivial - as to say each Object has many
details.
One of the things these OBJECTS allow us programers
to do is to avoid a single unbelievably complex "monolithic"
chunk of clay and divide the particular "problem domain"
down into individual parts that will usually model something
in the real world. My particular scepter has about 50
base OBJECTS, some of these objects are duplicated for
for me by the computer tens of thousands of times, and some
are only used once.
In the work I have set out to do I must get my objects to
"learn" and "model" all the details that are in an image.
These details must be in some useable format. Therein
lies the whole trick. Boy, Gail I thought this was going
to be rather easy when I started, and now I am humbled,
honestly humbled, by the power of what I think this is about.
Before I go into more details, let me give you an example
of what this thing can do. I can take a digital picture of
something like a barn with a stone fence, and a flock of
multi colored chickens running across our scene. Lots of
details! About two hours later I can be looking at the details
of a particular body chickens leg in the upper right hand
corner of tile #17 and decide I want to move it, resize it,
or delete it. When we have what we like we can tell the
computer to go to work again and it will then generate
(likely) hundreds of thousands of details for our tools to
follow to REPRODUCE every detail of YOUR IMAGE
step by detailed step i.e. the movements to remove glaze
from a single "polygon" of color might be defined by over
1000 points for a tool to move to, then to, then to and so on.
(This is a tedious approach, but suited to the tools we
are using, and we humans are excused while the silicon
chips control electric motors which turns screws.. and so
on. )
Below are the eight "Phases" of turning some sort of Image into
a tile Mural. It all starts with a real or imaginary image somehow
put into a BIT MAP format:
A. Real Scene (Ancient Mosaic, a stone fence....)
B Photograph or or Abstract Image
C Digital Scan of any of B, (Or skip A&B and use
that Digital Camera your going to get for Christmas)
D. Vectorizing Program (I.E. StreamLine by Adobe)
E. My Software
F. g_Code
G. A Machine that runs g_Code (somewhat like an engraver)
H. Tiles
Let's start by saying that the relationship A, B, & C are all
rather common sensical everyday stuff up to the point that you must
understand that your image from a scan of anything, or a digital
camera is in a "bitmap" or "raster" format. This is how the monitor
in front of you is working. One Pixel has One color
=====
Here in Door County we are 40 miles north of Green Bay, home
to the Packers and Lambau field. For our exercise, and your home
work we are going to go down to Lambau field, your friends are going
to view your work from a dirigible floating above, and I'm going
to teach you about all about the two types of Image Formats.
You wanted to know what my software does... well here is a photograph
of an image that a client would like a mural of. The mural will
be 100YDs by 34 YDS, or 3,600 Inches by 1,224 Inches. There are
4,406,400 one inch squares of field down there. Here are 4,406,400
one inch squares of paper. And there as many colored paints as
could ever want stacked up along the sidelines (there are exactly
16,777, 216 different colors to pick from here)
Well your first job is to go down there and color each of those pieces
of paper, and place it exactly on the field to best represent the
corresponding location on your photograph. When you get back, you
will know a lot about bit maps. (Now please think how you would
go about this..... and complete it in your mind.)
=============
Now we are ready for Vectors, the OTHER way to deal with Images.
Understanding Vectors is not trivial, I'm sure a semester could be
dedicated to it in Art School. In our context you can think of Vectors
as curves that define a boundary between solid bodies of colors. We are
at step D. You have a bit map image on the field now, your next job
is to "Vectorize" it. There are many ways to "vectorize" a single
bit map image.
Here are the tools you have:
1. an unlimited supply of pipe cleaners
2. some sort of "color averaging tool" (digital of course)
and here are the general steps to follow:
1. Find a body of "similar enough" colored pieces of paper.
2. Take your pipe cleaners and shape each one to approximate
the edge to any "other" color (or the field limits).
3. Fasten the pipe cleaners to each other.
4. Now use your "color averaging tool" and paint all the pieces
and partial pieces of paper inside the pipe cleaners with
the exact paint for this color.
5 Go back to #1 until you have surrounded every one of those
pieces of paper. (!)
Congratulations, Gail, you have VECTORIZED an image. You had
to make some compromises (or you just wrapped 4,406,400 pipe cleaners
around 4,406,400 squares). But, grasshopper, you have learned
to vectorize. Now go back out there, take this pile of binders,
and make a label for each closed loop (polygon) of pipe cleaners. Then
for each pipe cleaner in this polygon write down the distance from the
South-
East corner for four points to "peg" that curve. That is 8 numbers
to define each "Pipe Cleaner" (or Bezier Curve - Nikom?).
You probably had to use something like 1 million pipe cleaners to
do a detailed "vectorization". Still feeling like continuing? Well
type in those 8 million points and I'll be right back, ok?
=====
If you typed all those numbers, without missing one digit, and put
them in a certain format you wrote a POSTSCRIPT file. (ClayArter
Tony Hanson used to work with these files) This is the file that
my program will read.
Computers do some things very well, for example the 8 million points
you typed into that file will be read, and "filed away" inside the
computer
in about four minutes. The vectorizing that you did with all
those cans of paint, and pipe cleaners is done by such packages as
StreamLine(TM) by Adobe in 5 to 15 minutes on a state-of-the-art
Pentium type system. This program is not in the least artistic, it uses
simple rules, which you can modify to MECHANICALLY grind away
at making the decisions you made as an artist. THERE IS NO DIRECT
COMPARISON, NONE, ALL THIS PROGRAM CAN DO AT BEST
IS FAIRLY REPRESENT WHAT AN ARTIST GIVES IT. But think
about this, what if you give it a digital picture you took of a
wonderful
old barn, or a tremendous stone fence, or a vine covered stone house?
In any case like this the software can alleviate a terribly boring
task of Representing, NOT INTERPRETING, and provide a
very real service.
Also if, as an artist, you compose your image using certain "paint"
packages no vectorizing is necessary at all! Your work is
being built and represented by vectors AS YOU WORK. This is how
ALL our work has been done to this day, except two pieces which were
processed from a photographs. (They were only mildly successful, but
this is why I spent the last year spiffing up my software.)
Vectorizing is something of a necessary/pragmatic tool in some cases
that can perform "miracles" with some art, make a mediocre image
look great with one image, then frustrate the heck out of you on another
piece.
Using a vectorizing program is an art in itself that many graphic
artists
learn
for one reason or another.
One more note on this: as the world goes more to computers, many
things that are designed, such as houses, ships, and every type of
product is available DIRECTLY in file formats directly convertible
to Postscript. Just today I got an order for multiple copies of a tug
boat build here in Sturgeon Bay, from the engineers that designed it.
The image will come directly from their file, which is a composite
of all the parts they designed. I can be converted directly to
PostScript.
My software starts by reading a postscript file of an image we
wish to produce a mural of. This puts us at point D, and touching
on E above. I have spent hours writing and rewriting this, if
you or anybody on ClayArt wants to know the exciting details of
what goes on between steps D and H, the last step just let me know.
Otherwise you will miss the next exciting episode wherein I plan
to introduce you to my "Autonomous Urchin Paper Eaters". Stay
tuned!
How is this going?
Best,
George Koller
Sturgeon Bay, WI - Door County
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