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.'"

Comments

So this isn't actually useful

[Cathoderoytube]

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.