3D Sketcher

Sang-won Leigh @Sound Design and Programming Course Project

A smiling face drawn in 3D with my 3D sketch system, shown from different viewpoints

This project was my first attempt to build an actual human-computer interface. I always wanted to combine computer technologies with our innate capability of dealing with 3D environment, so I deeply dived into 3D computer vision problems. However, while computer vision is mainly concerned with acquiring 3D information 'without' human efforts, I tried to realize an interaction through which users are actually creating 3D data with computer's support. So I built a system that allows us to draw 3D graphical entities directly into the physical space, by combining inexpensive materials such as USB webcams and LED diodes.

Objectives

---

- Low-cost 3D sketch system
- Sketch result displayed on PC screen in real-time
- Simple hand-held interface as a drawing tip

System

---

- Stereo USB cam
- Max/MSP based software
- Java extension for matrix computation
- LED light as a hand-held input interface

Stereo USB cam captures stereoscopic RGB images, then the Max/MSP program processes the images to acquire 2D coordinates of LED light. Then Java program triangulates the actual 3D position of the LED light. With the obtained 3D coordinates, Max/MSP draws colored points and brush strokes in virtual 3D space, which is visualized by OpenGL library of Max/MSP.


Jun. 2009