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A 3D Curve Sketching System For Tablets
dominique_cimafranca writes "The Dynamic Graphics Project of the University of Toronto has released a pretty nifty 3D curve sketching system. Apart from the large drawing area, the tablet software looks very intuitive to artists. From the site: 'The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.'"
I recall from my multiliniear calculus course that the fundamental zeroid of the Draper function is orthagonal in [n-1/n] hyperspace to the semi-Euclidean plane of the minimal Pascal rectangle. So if you point at one point on the tablet, multiple points are mooted when the gesture constrains pretensioning on its hypothetical "theta" axis. In other words, poo.
I think my head just exploded into candy...
As an illustrator and 3d modeler, I must say, that is simply the most awesome thing I have ever seen. I would go so far as to say that it is 'insanely great'. I also just happen to be buying a Wacom Cintiq 21UX in the immediate future. FORTUITOUS!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Adding the ability to draw curves in the perspective window doesn't actually do anything helpful to the NURBS modeling workflow. It would be so nice if people responsible for making 3D software would actually fix the tools they've already implemented rather than introducing superfluous new ones that don't help anything. Please, if you science types actually want to make a genuinely appreciated contribution to 3D graphics, fix the bevel tool in Maya, also while you're at it modify the sculpt tools in Maya so they don't just make the geometry explode, and maybe add a 'make planiar' function. That would really be useful. Also the skin weighting tools could use some improvements. Like add a better visual feedback to what's associated with what and completely ditch the paint function. Also make it so I don't have to go into the component editor and babysit every vertex while I'm skin weighting. Oh yeah also, I'd really appreciate it if you'd make it so keys I set on constraints would show up on the time slider, giving them a different colour than red would also be handy. And when using constraints when the constraint is set to zero it should constrain to the world, not snap back to the origin. That's just a bloody headache.
I have nothing compelling to say
This seems like it could be very useful in bridging the gap between concept art and a fully rendered 3d model. I'll have to remember to point this out to a few of my artist colleagues at work and see what they think about it.
Of course, I'll probably have to warn them to turn off the sound first. Quick hint to the developers of this cool little toy: Artists get nervous when when programmers start talking about "single view symmetric epipolar method" and other very complicated terms. If you've ever worked with artists before, you know you're starting to get too technical when the eyes start glazing over. I then know to take a step back and try to re-phrase in non-tech.
All you programmers are now thinking "but... that's exactly what it's describing", and I'll just put my hand to my head and sigh. Different ways of thinking.
Don't even get me started about trying to get in the heads of game designers.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The Dynamic Graphics Project of the University of Toronto has released a pretty nifty 3D curve sketching system
I see a video and some links to bios and sample sketches, but no "released" software anywhere.
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
I thought it was going to be a 3d system for creating 2d drawings.. that would have been useful.
... but it doesn't
As it is (from a 3d artists point of view) this is just a more intense way of doing the same things that are already done with traditional 3d, and in fact comes nowhere close to what you can do with a sculpting program like z-brush.
If it gave me a 2d page I could turn and draw on like a real piece of paper.. that would be cool.. super cool.
once more into the breach
The UI for open, save, delete, etc. seems gallingly stupid, just use the damn keyboard(yeah, flipping from corner to corner to turn pages will be realy intuitive when there are 500 of them...). The UI for drawing, though, looks amazing. Substantial amounts of the correct automatic stuff happening automatically, just really impressive translation of standard flat pseudo-3D sketching into 3D models. Most impressive.
This is so cool. I hope they opensource it.
Looks like they are part of the presentation & demo sessions at the UIST (User Interface Software and Technology) being hosted by ACM next week.
More details here:
http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2008/
And a schedule of events:
http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2008/program/index.html
I hope to see additional project details and possibly some additional demonstration videos come from this event.
In my vocabulary, nurb means No Reason Boner. (It's better than saying NRB)
[/offtopic]
...what are the odds of getting a tablet laptop without Vista these days?
This seems pretty sweet, but I'm more interested in taking a tablet out with me rather than sitting behind a desk. I recall tablets hog more RAM than a usual OS, especially with vector graphics, so I shudder to think of trying to run this on a tablet under Vista.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
That looks very nice!
I was looking at some similar stuff recently. There's an older app with some of the same gestures, called Teddy, (video here), which was further developed to Smoothteddy.
Here's hoping these interfaces will be further developed and reach mainstream, and that they will help artists that are good at drawing but bad at extruding, uv-mapping, etc. create some cool stuff.
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
if you can draw, it's pretty wicked looking.
Personally, I'll still with Blender, for now.
Which rocks, by the way.
expandfairuse.org
If you had released what you did, and it had potential, someone might have finished it for you a year ago.
Blender rocks?
Blender's user interface is so bad that I can't imagine what the designer was thinking. Seriously. It's almost as if he hated end-users and decided that the only way he could express his hate was to make a program that appears superficially usable but caused as much pain and frustration possible when people tried to learn it.
So, where can we download this tool and try it for ourselves?
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I did release it as open-source (as all of Wings 3D is). No one saw the potential at the time and back then nobody wanted or knew how to program in Erlang. It's a matter of timing.
3D Wii
Well, who'ulda thunk it!
With the beta version of openSUSE 11.1, which I am now testing, I can get even the touch screen mode of my MultiTouch tablet working. Add to it the 3D desktop effects and it blows everyone out the window!
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?