Diffusion Curves

I heard Diffusion Curves were discussed on SVG Open (unfortunately I 
wasn't able to attend myself) and would love to hear some of the current 
thinking. For my master thesis I'm working on a (new) solver and in the 
not-too-distant future (within a few months) I'd like to implement them 
in Inkscape. I'd love for this to be well synchronized with the W3C 
work, so as not to have too much divergence.

My current thinking is that it would probably be best to basically make 
it possible to define a gradient *along* a path. This would constitute 
the boundary condition normally used in diffusion curves. These colors 
would then be diffused throughout the area normally affected by the fill 
of the path. I hear this is pretty similar to what you discussed?

If an open path is used the implicit closing segment should probably 
have a "zero gradient" boundary condition. And it could be useful to 
allow such (or even more general) boundary conditions on regular parts 
of the path as well.

This (initially) disregards blur. I think there could be ways to 
incorporate that as well, but I haven't looked into that in detail yet. 
And my current thinking is that it might simply be best to separate the 
two. After all, why wouldn't you want a spatially varying blur for 
normal gradients or solid colors?

Other than that I'm wondering whether it would make sense to use 
diffusion curves as paint for the stroke? If so, how would this work? 
One interpretation could be that this simply yields a stroke which 
varies in color according to the gradient (but only *along* the stroke, 
not *across* the stroke).

Received on Tuesday, 7 September 2010 15:56:26 UTC