> The main drawback of all these techniques [such as PS/AI's 'Puppet Warp'] is that they require running a solver, making them very computationally expensive, which is not ideal in a real-time environment.

What kind of system are these people running this on, I've been grabbing collections of paths in Illustrator and pushing them around in realtime with Puppet Warp for years.

Also I turned off the "automatically generate puppet pins" switch ages ago because it never guessed right and I got tired of deleting a bunch of pins before dropping my own in.

Isn't this kinda how joints and other constraints (and IK) work in physics engines?

I'm sure it's not trivial, but there's a large literature and existing code that helps us in figuring out how to do this in real time.

Judging from previous Ink&Switch work, the target devices are likely tablets or below.

There's also various levels of "real-time" - pushing something in Illustrator might require less responsiveness to feel fluid than handwriting feedback.

This site confuses me - is this a concrete software product being built (or at least there are prototypes in production), or are these just a giant theory-crafting exercise?

I was confused too. There's no mention of current implementations. It's like half an encyclopedia article missing the good half. For example, TLDraw has it's own inking algorithm of pressure+velocity+path -> generated outlines comprised of bezier curves. InkCanvas in Microsoft implementations afaik is closed-source. Is there a standard library for ink for the pencil in macos? Or does everyone roll-their-own on the mac side?

Ink and switch is a research lab. As far as I'm aware, they're not a building any specific products, just exploring what is possible for human computer interactions

But are they building prototypes to validate their ideas in practice?

Yes, they also have some software you can use today, not just prototypes.

I had the same thought… that’s a lot of text and very few illustrations for an article about graphics.

The draw-to-CAD idea in there is super interesting. I have been trying to learn CAD over the past few months using FreeCAD. I imagine it would be easier if instead of using structured tools for drawing fixed shapes, one could draw shapes free-hand using pen and tablet. The free hands get transformed into "formal" shapes and then manipulated more. Possibly completely different experience.

Confusing landing page. Is this a specific software or a general idea?

It's their lab notes, so it's exploring a general idea, but they're also referencing previous software they've built (like crosscut)

I've been playing around in this area recently (in a much more limited way).

This perspective and these notes are absolutely golden.

Love the lab note aesthetic!