After years of development Expresii has finally been released. The ink painting software uses fluid dynamics to simulate watercolor and other natural media, and features GPU-accelerated water-based paint, organic brushes simulation and ultra-deep zoom capabilities.

Expresii, the startup founded by former Adobe and Microsoft graphics researcher Nelson Chu, has shipped Expresii 1.0, the first commercial release of its promising digital brush-and-ink painting system.

In development for several years – we covered an early tech demo back in 2013 – Expresii mimics the behaviour of real inks on paper, including the way they flow under gravity and the way colours blend.

It’s designed to replicate traditional Eastern painting – the brush engine mimics the deformations of an actual calligraphy brush – but as the demo videos show, it can be used to create Western-style watercolour effects.

The software can generate images up to 12K resolution, and is GPU-accelerated to smooth out panning and zooming, although the hardware requirements are quite low: a $60-100 graphics card is recommended.

It supports both pen and touch input, and if you’ve got a device with a tilt sensor (or a game controller), you can even tilt your virtual paper to control the flow of the ink. Images can be saved in PNG or PSD formats, with support for alpha channels and PSD layers.

Home Page - http://www.expresii.com/

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