EAGER: Minimal 3D Modeling Methodology

建模和设计是计算机图形学和计算机视觉研究与应用的核心组成部分。传统建模包括让设计者提供所需虚拟对象的详细(数字)规范或物理对象的足够照片以实现多视点立体重建，尽管现代基于图形用户界面的工具可以在一定程度上帮助减少所需的照片数量。数字草图绘制工具为对象建模提供了另一种机制，但即使其中一些工具试图通过完成部分草图来帮助用户，仍需要做出显著的努力才能获得详细的结果。这个项目将探索一种建模方法，以解决以下问题：我们至少可以设计什么，并仍然获得一个充分表达的系统？在一个极端，数字建模工具支持高表现力，但需要高设计工作量，而在另一个极端，提供一组固定的模型模板会导致非常低的设计工作量，但也会导致低模型表现力。最近的一些努力，比如PI从草图到程序建模的工作，落在了中间的某个地方。当前研究的目标是确定设计和表现力之间的最佳平衡点，即刚好足够的设计努力来产生足够的表现力模型。这项多学科工作的重点将是计算考古学，这是一个有趣的应用程序，只有零散的信息可用，因此该方法在该领域的成功将意味着项目结果也将广泛推广到其他领域。文献中已经建立，只有我们感知的一小部分足以让一个人创建一个物体的心理3D表示。考虑到这一点，该项目将在PI现有的照片到3D建模工具的基础上进行构建和扩展，方法是添加应用于城市和考古建模和设计的新的极简主义机器学习基础，以构建只需要用户提供足够输入并能够为预期目标生成足够完整的3D模型的软件。将探索降低输入细节和分析模型输出如何受到影响的各种方法，以确定最有希望保留和提高稳健性的方法。来自土耳其南部海岸达纳岛和博格萨克岛两个考古遗址的约1TB图像和点云数据将作为试验床。这些岛屿的结构是用当地采石场的材料建造的，是从古代保存下来的主要城市景观类型，但由于大小、复杂性、地形和不完整而难以研究。尽管如此，基于无人机的空中成像和激光雷达仍是可能的。这项研究将调查在设计过程中必须指定多少才能区分可能的形式及其参数，以表达期望的输出。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Modeling and design are core components of computer graphics and computer vision research and applications. Traditional modeling consists of having the designer provide either a detailed (digital) specification of the desired virtual object or sufficient photographs of a physical object to enable a multi-view stereo reconstruction, although modern GUI-based tools can help reduce to a certain extent the number of photographs required. Digital sketching tools provide an alternative mechanism for modeling objects, but even though some of these try to assist the user by completing partial sketches a notable effort is still required to achieve detailed results. This project will explore a modeling methodology that addresses the following question: What is the least we can design and still obtain a sufficiently expressive system? At one extreme digital modeling tools support high expressivity but require high design effort, while at the other extreme providing a fixed set of model templates incurs very low design effort but results in low model expressivity as well. Some recent efforts, such as the PI's sketch-to-procedural-modeling work, fall somewhere in the middle. The goal of the current research is to determine the point of optimum balance between design and expressivity, that is just enough design effort to produce a sufficiently expressive model. The focus of this multi-disciplinary work will be on computational archaeology, an interesting application where only fragmented information is available, hence success of the approach in this domain will imply broad generalizability of project outcomes to other areas as well.It has been established in the literature that only a fraction of what we perceive suffices for a person to create a mental 3D representation of an object. With this observation in mind, the project will build upon and extend the PI's existing photograph-to-3D modeling tool by adding new minimalist machine learning underpinnings applied to urban and archaeological modeling and design, to build software that requests just enough input from the user and is able to produce 3D models of sufficient completeness for the intended goal. Various ways of degrading the input detail and analyzing how the model output is affected will be explored to identify the most promising for retention and improvement of robustness. About a terabyte of imagery and point cloud data from two archaeological sites of ancient settlements on the islands of Dana and Bogsak along the southern coast of Turkey will serve as a testbed. These islands have structures built using material from local stone quarries and are a main type of urban landscape to survive from antiquity but are difficult to study due to size, complexity, terrain, and incompleteness. Nonetheless, aerial drone-based imagery and LIDAR are possible. The research will investigate how much must be specified during design to differentiate among the possible forms and their parameters to express a desired output.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.