Real-time generation of digital Chinese calligraphy based on geometric continuity

This paper presents a method to simulate the dynamic handwriting process by constructing visually smooth stroke trajectories and utilizing variated stroke width to highlight Chinese calligraphy characteristic in real time. Based on the input skeleton data, a piecewise cubic Bézier curve is firstly created on the fly to define the writing trajectory for each stroke. The continuity condition of the resulting curve is relaxed to G1 at joint points in exchange for the freedom of adjusting control points to keep the trajectory curve visually smooth. A practical and efficient stroke width model is also invented by analyzing handwriting data to enhance the Chinese calligraphy features, with writing speed and acceleration data taken into account. Finally, an image-based rendering technique is implemented to depict the resulting calligraphies in real time, which is applicable to various digital devices at a low computational cost. This approach has shown promising results in many experiments, with Chinese calligraphy characteristics demonstrated successfully.