Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#81

Post by 101008 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

TT3351 wrote: post #78

101008 wrote: post #71

Producing handwriting is a problem a group of people I belong to is facing. We work (free, on our free time), detecting forgeried signatures of a celebrity on eBay (forgeries that can go to thousdans of dollars). Forgers are not good imitating signatures, but they discovered how to create the celebrity handwriting using an autopen, which means is harder everyday to distinguish real ones from fake ones. Collectors are…

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. I recommend the Orson Welles film F is for Fake.

But if you think you are buying X and receive Y, that's a scam.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#82

Post by detritus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

Wonderful! And as it generates single stroke SVG exports, I can output to a laser cutter and have it write for me :)

I can't think of a practical use for this, but that's not stopped me wasting the last 15 minutes getting my machine to write out expletives in neater cursive than I could manage...

- ed

Oh, and this is by far the best digital 'handwriting' I've ever seen, despite the occasional glitches and believe me - I've been interested in this sort of thing for decades.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#83

Post by detritus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

Having played with this a bit - if you can flesh it out a bit, I am sure you can monetize this.

I've been dicking around with it for an hour or two and I'm getting results that - if i mingle outputs - are to my eye completely human in nature.

Honestly, as an ex sort of still designer who still engages with that sort of community, i see a tool like this that makes neat scripty vector paths (and I think that is particularly important) as being super-useful. It outputs unique forms that are individual in nature. I'm thinking all the graphic designers who makes stuff for weddings and invites and whatnot.

Needs work, and I have absolutely no concept of how complex it is to refine things, but what you have here is a helluva start to something I think could be immensely useful to some people.

- minor eds

- ed ed

Can you manage the stroke widths through the cursive forms, thinner when drawn quicker and straighter, fatter when slower around corners, for example?

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#84

Post by detritus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

How would you go about creating a minimal/medium source of input to train this?

Could you create a 'written test' type thing - a couple of pages of selected forms of repeated instances of glyphs and interactons - that would be used as input and to learn a passable subset of one's own handwriting?