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2D Drawing To 3D Object Tool
legoburner writes, "Takeo Igarashi from the University of Tokyo has a very impressive java applet/program, called Teddy, which he describes as 'A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design', and basically allows you to sketch in simple 2D and have it automatically converted to full 3D. The tool is certainly very impressive and there is a demonstration video available. The end product looks like a hand-drawn object instead of the usual clinical, perfect 3D objects that are designed using standard rendering tools." This impressive technology was presented at SigGraph 1999 (PDF); a commercial product based on it is available in Japan.
What happens if you give Escher this thing?
Now this seems like the 3D moldeling I've been dreaming for. I've tried blender on several occasions, but it's very difficult to get something that looks relatively close to what you're thinking. I really like the fact that you can really create complex models with a handful of simple operations. Me likee!
Given the types of things the guy drew in the video, I think the penis gourd design industry is about to go through a fashion revival.
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As the headline points out, this was demoed at SIGGRAPH 1999. Umm, maybe someone could tell me why Slashdot is featuring news from 7 years ago on the front page. Igarashi's work was novel at the time (in fact, he won the Significant New Researcher Award at this year's SIGGRAPH partly because of it), but let's remember that it's 2006 and a lot has been done in the world of sketch based interfaces. SmoothSketch3D is just one example from this year alone.
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Damn that one I think got Slashdotted before it was posted. The Slashdotting effect seems to work on a quantum level. Websites are begining to antiscipate being Slashdotted so they are able to exceed their usuage before a story is even posted. I have to wonder if a site exists in an exceeded and unexceeded state? If you try to log on will it come up quota exceeded half the time and the other half the time load up properly? Okay we need to test this puppy. I need a cat and a pistol and a box. My room mate has two cats so we're covered there and I can even repeat the experiment. "Here kitty kitty. Want to play in the nice box?"
You can click on the 'style' button to get a wireframe mesh rather than the rather abysmal 'sketch' front end.
Then again it is only a prototype, hopefully the in-application rendering will improve vastly because it isn't helping the application do its thing.
I expect that in-game potatoes, gourds, melons, coconuts and snowmen will look great in the future.
But come on... doesn't everyone have a potato powered clock design that they've been dying to get in a 3d model? Better yet, there's nothing like seeing you're panzer actually launch 3d potatoes on Enemy Territory!
I.. for one.. welcome our new penis drawing overlords
Teddy is a different beast then ZBrush. ZBrush, as far as I know, allows you do model primitve 3D shapes in a relativly normal way and then to paint displacement maps on top of those base shapes, so you basically get an object with extreme detail. Which is great whe you want extremly detailed 3D models. Teddy on the other side isn't really about detail at all, its about making 3D modeling a 2D task and mainly about making it an trivially task so as in a 6 year old could do it. You can't really create detailed models with Teddy as it is, but you can create a 3D Teddy by simply drawing a 2D Teddy, all the 3d expansion is done automatically.
Here's a shot of a bunny rabbit I was playing with imported into Maya. I threw a sphere eye into the Teddy mesh for giggles. Teddy saves OBJ files (OBJ is a standard text file format created by Alias - now Autodesk). Almost any 3D software can import OBJ files including Blender. Teddy creates poly tris, so you might get some game tools to compile raw teddy meshes if you dared.
It seems that the meshes it creates are pretty symetrical with a middle row of vertices. This means that what you create can be cut in half and mirrored to create truly symetrical meshes easily. In my bunny example, I only created one ear so that I can just duplicate it on the other side for matching ears (not done in the screenshot).
The meshes Teddy creates do need cleanup though as it wastes a lot of polys where things converge (look at the bottom tip of the bunny's nose). I would consider Teddy a decent tool to brainstorm ideas, however there will still be plenty of work to do inside your 3D software of choice. Using it as a tool to create organic primitives is another option. I'm going to keep it in the toolbox, but it's not a replacement for other software.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
yet another 3d penis modeller..
This program has been out for some time now and looks to be much more advanced than Teddy/Smooth Teddy/Magical Sketch.
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In the mid-late 80's I took a 3D graphics course in college where we built a 3D rendering engine from scratch (with Pascal). Our primary rendering technique was to first draw a 2D shape. It was then "extended" in 3D to produce a 3D shape. Think of it as making 2 copies of a 2D shape and then putting toothpicks on the outside between each "slice". One then puts a paper skin around the toothpicks to make a solid object. (The toothpicks were automatic, they were simply extended points from the original shape polygon.)
One could make a lot of interesting and recognizable shapes with this technique alone. It would make a cool product for kids with a more polished interface. My final project was a dog wizzing on a fire hydrant, rendered with shading. (I was one of the few who finished the shading part, most only got to wire-frame stage. This was partly because I sacrifaced other classes to gain time and because I bothered to learn the Pascal debugger while others skipped it.)
Another technique discussed (but not implimented in the class) was "lathing" whereby you draw a curve around a center line. The software would then rotate this curve to create a rounded shape.
These techniques would probably not be sufficent for heavy commercial use, but for recreation and drafts they were quite effective.
I don't know if this tool has it, I only saw part of the demo before the server froze. But the "blob" rendering like this tool has would make a nice addition to extending and lathing. Thus, we have:
1. Extending
2. Lathing
3. Blobbing (this tool)
Any more that anyone knows about?
Table-ized A.I.
Make this vector based and we might have a winner! Imagine editing these shapes with vectors, and we're getting close to sculpting. =)
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