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3D Modelling From a Sketch
hargettp writes "Happened to be skimming through the December BoingBoing and I noticed this link to research into 3D modelling by interpreting sketches. Basically, with a pen and tablet and a good Java applet, a user can start digitally modelling 3D structures about as easy as if they were molding clay with their bare hands. It was the demonstration video that made my jaw drop. Impressive!"
Very old news. "Teddy" was developed by Takeo Igarashi at the University of Tokyo, and presented at SIGGRAPH 1999. 8-13-99 Schedule
Google Cache to the rescue. What do I win?
Open source 3D for GIS : vterrain.org
See also openscenegraph.org
Both can use Remote Sensing data.
Animoog.org
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
You're kidding, right? Cell Shading has been around for ages and has become a recent trend in video games, ala Nintendo's latest Zelda game.
http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/xiii/
XIII is done totaly with cell shading. Looks and plays like a comic book. The demo at least.
Mark.
The / in
Although geared toward architectural sketching, SketchUp might serve some of these needs. (Disclosure: I've not used the software, but I do walk past their office on a near-daily basis).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This sounds like it might have a lot in common with the Priceton 3d model search engine covered on slashdot a while back.
This one using Squeak (Smalltalk) [Google Cached]
hey mods - the person used the anchor tag instead. The url is different.
try the application itself. I was going to try it, but it requires windows for some of it's native rendering code (looks like direct x calls).
TallGreen CMS hosting
Check out Atrform's curvy 3d . It is quite similar to teddy but much more advanced. You can create very complex shapes with just a few strokes. The gallery and tutorials are very impressive.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/strategy/colorquestten tativetitle/
hate titty pee colon slash slash
Basicly you're right. Using clay would be the most 'natural' way to do it. /. geeks would build it themselves.
Unforunately, if you want to do it in clay, you would have to find a way to digitse it.
That means you need a 3d-scanner of some sort (here, here, here).
Needless to say, these can be very expensive.
Ofourse serious
On the other hand if you want to stay with the clay option, go for stopmotion. It worked for Aardman!
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
In this game, you used a variety of different brushes to draw a monster. You had different options, such as picking a "head" brush to signify the object you were drawing was part of the monsters head, etc...but, for the most part, the game just saw the lines you were drawing. The AMAZING part of this game was that it would take your 2d sketch and, for the most part, flesh it out in 3d. Not only that, it would also fully animate the model through a built in algorithm.
The impressive part was how well this worked. Not only did it do what it was supposed to do but, in most cases, it actually realistically animated the monster. It's a little cutesy, but you guys who are into this kind of thing should check it out!
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I downloaded SmoothTeddy when I first saw it on boingboing and have been playing with it a little. It's nice being able to create 3D images so flexibly, but there are bugs in the system. The interface has many elements of gestures (delete a shape by drawing a line from it to a trashcan, cut it apart by drawing a line across it, mirror it by drawing a line from a shape off into the air). However it's written in Java and it shows. It's more of a technology demo than something that can be used for real work at the moment. The program's only export format is to Alice, a combination 3D modelling/programming system (well... that's technically true at least, heh). The guy's page said that there's a commercial product in Japan that uses the Teddy technology, but that it's Japanese-only.
Ignoring the bugs (many of which cause the program to freeze if an incorrect stroke is drawn), there are some cool elements to this. Most things you can draw end up looking almost exactly like a big pillow. You can draw objects on the pillow that intersect it and then adjust their location on the pillow's surface. When it gets where you want it you can "merge" it with the pillow. The program tries to create smooth meshes wherever it can, and making sharp corners is almost impossible without creative use of the cutting tool.
Verdict: fun to play with if you have a good tolerance for bugs and don't mind that you won't be able to easily get your work into another program.
From me, to you. But I don't except the server to survive a real slashdotting, so behave.
the videoThere's one catch - "doing what you want" is not always the easiest, nor the fastest way to do something. For example, what if, instead of just drawing a line, I want to draw a straight line. Suddenly, I need some kind of function that will constrain the movement along one axis. The alternative is to spend oodles of time trying to tweak a line until it's straight enough. What if I want to start out with a geographic primitive? Am I supposed to build one from scratch? Once I have that, what if I need to scale a part of it? Should that be done manually? Let's say I'd like to duplicate it and the flip it across an axis (often used for creating identical left/right portions of object)? Do I spend gobs of time doing this manually?
Tools have their place- and often, if used correctly, they are there to help us produce superior results, and save significant amounts of time in the process. Just like an empty window, they aren't a substitute for talent and artistic skill, but they can sure provide ways to automate the purely tedious aspects of 3D modeling.
You can use this mirror to view the video.
Here's a .torrent that was posted way down below, lost in the kerfuffle.
http://alge.nlc.no/smoothteddy.avi.torrent
Mod parent AC up, contains valid torrent link for the video (maxing out my T1 as we speak:
http://alge.nlc.no/smoothteddy.avi.torrent
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