This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop a comprehensive software toolkit for creating digital mosaic artwork. Mosaics have proven to be a great source of visual splendor for thousands of years. Despite their prominence in art and architecture, mosaics are arduous to design and assemble by hand. The goal of this Phase I project is to build and test software tools to automate production of digital mosaic artwork. After integration with robotic assembly in Phase II, the proposed automation will significantly lower the time and cost for designing and manufacturing mosaic artwork. In Phase I, Artaic proposes to combine two leading methodologies for digital tile layout - procedural and optimization-based algorithms - to closely mimic the workflow of mosaic artists. Artists will sketch curves to denote perceptually important edges along which the tiles should be oriented, while algorithms will determine tile placement in response to user-defined parameters, rendering styles, and composition rules
If successful, this work will have broad commercial potential in art, design, and architecture. Software and robotic automation will lower the cost of mosaics and increase its traditional societal impact of adorning public, commercial, and residential spaces. This will also have spillover benefits, including growing use of this artform in advertising, entertainment, and visual effects. The ultimate goal of Artaic is to leverage this software with custom robotics to create physical mosaics. This will enable Artaic to expand into a multi-billion dollar market and grow a domestic workforce. The fact that there is a software outlet for this work in addition to a proven commercial market for large-scale physical output adds to the case for the advancement of the proposed research.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to develop a comprehensive software toolkit for creating digital mosaic artwork. Mosaics have proven to be a great source of visual splendor for thousands of years. Despite its prominence in art and architecture, mosaics are arduous to design and assemble by hand. The goal of this Phase I project is to build and test software tools to automate production of digital mosaic artwork. After integration with robotic assembly in Phase II, the proposed automation will significantly lower the time and cost for designing and manufacturing mosaic artwork. In Phase I, Artaic proposed to exploit procedural tile layout techniques to closely mimic the workflow of mosaic artists. Artists are to sketch curves to denote perceptually important edges along which the tiles should be oriented, while algorithms determine tile placement in response to user-defined parameters, rendering styles, and composition rules. Phase I is considered a success since a test group of mosaic artists deemed our rendered output to match or exceed the quality of handmade mosaics encompassing a prescribed set of mosaic effects, while achieving more than an order of magnitude performance gain over manual design. This work will have broad commercial potential in art, design, and architecture. Software and robotic automation will lower the cost of mosaics and increase its traditional societal impact of adorning public, commercial, and residential spaces. This will also have spillover benefits, including growing use of this artform in advertising, entertainment, and visual effects. The proposed software will be disseminated as a Photoshop plugin for generating digital renderings or poster printouts. This software outlet for the work, in addition to a proven commercial market for large-scale physical output, adds to the compelling case for the advancement of the proposed research. Figures 13, 14 and 15 show examples of source images and outputs rendered with our software.
