Yiming's News 05/25/2025

OMG it's been quite a while again I keep forgetting to post updates about my projects and stuff...

Summer is coming (for the northern hemisphere anyway) and I hope everyone is doing just fine :D

What's new

HarmonyOS Technical Research

Recently Huawei have announced their HarmonyOS computer, which is basically a blown up smartphone with their supposedly closed ecosystem. It sounds ok but I haven't got any that kind of devices yet, but I took some time to dig that and see if it's possible to adapt OurPaint onto it. So far there have been some problems, and the documentation is really only good for their typescript stuff (I don't know much about that either, but it's supposedly more complete). Asked a few questions on the forum but no replies.

Long story short, I'm able to easily compile C into HarmonyOS-spec libs with their CMake Toolchain file specified. However I still haven't find any "native app glue" type of stuff that allows me to make a package and have an entry point.

Main issues preventing migrating OurPaint onto HarmonyOS:

• No native app glue, so far technically my understanding is that it's still possible with some entry point specified in some packaging files, but it's again getting unnecessarily complex.
  • One of the complexity being the hvigorw thing which supposedly handles everything including dependency check/compiling/packaging etc, it makes a simple thing complex. And their dev eco studio is not available on linux.
• fopen still can't open public files from C side.
• Closed ecosystem may present an issue for distribution which I'm not planning to manage anyway.

There are some stuff that I feel that is good:

• APIs seems to be nicely written with lower_case
• Has GLES3.2/Vulkan support.
• Supposedly you don't need to always interact with JSVM because there are other CAPIs that directly does things for you. (Not sure, may need to dig)

Generic updates on OurPaint

I've been doing implementations of a newly designed Pigment/Paint based canvas and brush support. It uses 4 pixels to record spectrum information of 1 pixel. And depends on the method of display, this may lead to very interesting digital artifacts which has some aesthetic value.

The palette/color picker in pigment canvas is also redesigned. You will be able to select a few original "tubes of paint" and dab them to mix colors in the palette. This can better train artists on how to see and mix colors that they want.

I'm also researching possibilities to load 3D LUTs with OurPaint, not sure how practical that would be, but it's also a creative route we can explore.

Other stuff

I have been doing some reference poses and taking photos, which could be useful for some specific scenes in my upcoming comic projects. In the process I have trained myself to be more cautious on configuring lenses and camera, and got some really good effects.

Also anybody playing Delta Force? One of my friend got me into it, it's kinda interesting although I'm pretty bad at FPS games :sweat_smile: .

Plans

I should be working on OurPaint on the side still, and this time I'm gonna release one or two RC versions before finally coming out with v0.5. I should try and find out what's potentially crashing the node editor. The editor would need some cosmetics as well to make it more usable to artists.

Other than that, I probably should continue my paintins on thumbnails that I have saved in my sketchbooks. OurPaint being in a broken state and I'm being clumsy it's always preventing me to do drawings. This needs to be taken care of.

Anyways, hope you guys have a nice day!