ENLIGHTEN3D

By Joshua Koopferstock

If creating 3D models was as easy as taking photos, it is safe to say that the use of 3D would be far more widespread than it is today.  From e-commerce to virtual tourism to casual games, reducing the cost and complexity of creating 3D models would have a widespread effect on multiple industries.

Feeling Software is making that possible.  Over the last 2 years, we have worked to develop a technology that allows anyone to create 3D models with little effort and no training.  Our goal: simplicity.  You take a bunch of photos with a regular camera from any angle you please, and we automatically create a 3D model.  The demo video below discusses our project in detail.

Feeling Software Demo from joshk on Vimeo.

We have thought of a variety ways that this technology can be applied to solve problems for consumers.  For our readers, imagine that you could take photos of an object or scene, press a button, and instantly have a high-quality 3D model of that object or scene.  If this technology were available today, how would you use it?

By Christian Laforte

It’s been a over month since Google launched the browser plug-in for Google Earth, combining the best of Google Maps (fast, easy, in the browser, extendable through javascript) with the capability to navigate in a 3D terrain.

So does the 3D capability really add a lot over the regular Google Maps? It’s still too early to tell, but a few examples show the potential applications in education, entertainment and planning.

The most visually compelling example I’ve seen so far comes from Bjorn Sandvik’s ThematicMapping blog:

In a glance, you can see in which countries infant mortality is a critical problem. A color legend alone doesn’t fire the imagination the same way.

Another example, the Google Monster Milktruck, is kind of fun:

This mini-game allows you to drive the milk truck around. Unfortunately, many limitations of the Google Earth engine become apparent, especially the lack of collision detections with walls.

A third example, from GolfNation’s blog, allows you to see a golf course in 3D:

This example demonstrates the main problem with Google Earth right now: for the 3D capability to be worthwhile, we need more 3D content. Trees, cars and buildings look like they are painted on the ground, because we don’t have a 3D representation. We’re basically just looking at 2D data (satellite imagery) from a different perspective.

Google and Microsoft are apparently working hard on this problem of reconstructing buildings and landmarks. Feeling Software is also investing in 3D reconstruction from images… but we’re taking a different strategy, that hopefully will put us one step ahead of these giants, in one promising niche. Incidentally, our Feeling 3D Engine also supports KML and KMZ, along with geo-referencing and geographic measurements.

Incidentally, there are other 3D GIS (geographic information systems) that work on the web. One interesting example comes from Korea, according to this informative ZDNet article:

If you know of other compelling examples of 3D use in GIS, by all means, reply to this post!

By Joshua Koopferstock

This post follows Christian’s post on advancements in 3D technology for hair reconstruction. One immediately apparent application of the technology is for digital effects in film. We would expect a reduction in the time needed to model hair versus the current methods, thus giving better realism for the buck.

Why don’t we look at this technology through a wider lens. Allow me to momentarily step into the shoes of the brand manager of L’Oreal’s Redken hair products brand. As the brand manager, I understand well two properties of hair: each person’s hair is distinct, and hair is a “living” and moving part of the body.

Photo by Jurijus Azanovas

To address the first property and promote my product effectively, I can offer samples of the product so that the consumer can see how it will affect her own unique hair. However, this is risky for the consumer who has to try something new in her hair, and risky for me as the brand manager because the exact result (and the way that the consumer interprets the result, since beauty is, of course, subjective) is out of my control. For the second property, “living” hair, I can show hair in motion with video, but this approach ignores the importance of personal distinctiveness.

What if, using technology like the Hair Photobooth, you could quickly and automatically recreate a 3D model of yourself and your hair so that you could see what your hair would look like with different Redken products? This gives me, the brand manager, a much better control of the resulting look (some automatic touch-ups wouldn’t harm the realism much), and reduces the risk for the consumer who no longer has to put his or her hairdo on the line.

As the development of this technology progresses, we can expect that it will not only be able to automatically model hair, but also automatically make it animation-ready. With this, we can take it a step further and allow the consumer to run the 3D model of themselves through a few preset animations. Now I, the brand manager, am even more in control of the context in which the consumer first sees the product in her own hair, and I have drastically improved the realism by giving the hair “life” and portraying it in motion. And let’s say that as an added feature, I let the consumer share the animation with her friends through facebook or embed it in her blog, and maybe even vote on which of the results is the best.

Community building, personalisation and customisation in an environment controlled by the brand; this is what every brand manager dreams for and where the future of branding, driven by 3D technology, is leading us.

By Christian Laforte

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a realistic 3D model of yourself or your dream date? This has long been a dream of computer graphics researchers, 3D artists and sex-starved teenagers. This post will explore how new research and applications will soon make this possible and easy for everyone, even people like me who have a hard time modeling a cube.

Building realistic 3D human characters is becoming increasingly easy. While it still takes years of practice and exceptional artistic talent to create a 3D human from scratch, there are now dozens of products out there that will vastly simplify the process:

1. You can buy good looking characters as-is, at places like Daz3D. Using a 3D modeling tool, you can customize these characters to look like anyone of your choosing… assuming you have days to spare and some artistic talent.
   
2. If you’re short for time and you’re primarily concerned in re-creating someone’s face, you can use Face Reconstruction tools. A few of them exist but most don’t produce decent results without significant touch ups.
   
   One exception, Big Stage, is expected to launch soon. (Disclaimer: Big Stage is a client of ours.) Big Stage won’t simply allow you to re-create your own face in 3D in a few minutes… it will enable you to replace the face of a character in your favorite movie by your own! Imagine reliving the excitement of Indiana Jones with your own face instead of Harrison Ford’s.

Still, even the best Face Reconstruction tools have one big problem in common: hair. Everybody has hair so it’s easy to take it for granted… but tens of billions of dollars spent on shampoo, hair replacement creams and implants prove that beautiful hair matters a lot. I would argue that in 3D animation, there are only two things left to recreate humans: beautiful hair and realistic facial feelings. Let’s keep the feelings for another post and focus on what’s next for hair.

According to a new paper authored by some smart graphics researchers, reconstructing hair will soon be as simple as stepping in a Hair Photobooth. Sylvain Paris and his colleagues have invented a new acquisition technique that involves moving lights, projectors, cameras and complex algorithms to produce amazingly realistic hair in 3D.

While their system can automatically produce results that rival the best 3D artists, it remains to be seen how easily it works with more problematic cases like blond hair, long hair or hair animation.

The paper will be published in a few months at the prestigious Siggraph 2008 conference:

Hair Photobooth: Geometric and Photometric Acquisition of Real Hairstyles

Sylvain Paris (Adobe Systems Inc.), Will Chang, Wojciech Jarosz (University of California, San Diego), Oleg Kozhushnyan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Wojciech Matusik (Adobe Systems Inc.), Matthias Zwicker (University of California, San Diego), Frédo Durand (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

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