Creating Virtual Shapes via Intuitive Input

制造业和娱乐业高度自动化，但效率还远远不够。其中一个关键问题是创造内容。工程师和艺术家花费数天或数月的时间设计要制造的数字CAD模型，或为视频游戏和特效设计和动画角色模型。因此，内容创建过程通常是这些行业中最耗时和最昂贵的过程。造成这种阻碍的主要原因是形状建模软件。***当前用于动画或CAD的形状建模系统是用面向工具的范式构建的。在这个范例中，用户认为建模是一系列使用工具的操作：例如，画一个矩形，创建一条曲线，沿着它挤压，平滑。然而，当一个人想要与另一个人交流他们对形状的想法时，这种以工具为导向的解释将会非常耗时。我们彼此之间传递信息的方式与我们向计算机传递信息的方式之间的差距是现代几何建模工具的一个基本问题。尽管取得了重大进展，但目前的形状建模软件需要专门的培训，并且经常阻碍艺术家的想象力，迫使他们考虑细节而不是大局。******我的研究项目的目标是创建以人为本而不是以工具为导向的建模软件。这类软件的设计目的是通过非常简洁、自然但往往模棱两可的描述来推断基本形状。这样的软件将释放艺术家的创造力和生产力。用以人为本的软件扩展当前的建模工具包，不仅可以加快3D模型的原型制作，还可以使艺术家与很少的专业3D培训创建高质量的模型。***从长远来看，我正在设想各种行业和应用的形状建模软件，传统的计算机建模工具与基于自然输入的面向人类的工具共存。这种努力最终将重塑我们对造型的思考方式：从一个繁琐的过程到一个人的想象力的毫不费力的记录。******在这个提案中，我将重点关注素描和手势绘画作为自然输入的主要形式。最初的草图可以惊人地接近最终渲染图像的3D模型，但仍然只用作工业建模管道的参考。相比之下，我专注于直接使用草图作为建模/动画系统的输入，旨在避免繁琐的手动建模或摆姿势。虽然我们离算法解释自然草图和手势图纸还很远，但我们可以通过提议的项目更接近目标。**

The manufacturing and the entertainment industries are heavily automated but still far from being efficient. One of the key issues is creating content. Engineers and artists spend days and months designing digital CAD models to be manufactured or designing and animating character models for videogames and special effects. As a result, content creation processes are often the most time consuming and expensive processes in those industries. The main reason for such hindrance is shape modeling software.***Current shape modeling systems for animation or CAD are built with a tool-oriented paradigm in mind. In this paradigm, users think of modeling as a sequence of operations with tools: for instance, draw a rectangle, create a curve, extrude along it, smooth. However, when a person wants to communicate their idea of a shape to another person, such tool-oriented explanations would be excessively time-consuming. This gap between the way we transmit information to each other versus the way we transmit information to a computer is a fundamental problem of modern geometric modeling tools. Despite significant progress, current shape modeling software requires specialized training and often hampers artists' imagination by forcing them to think about details instead of the big picture.******The goal of my research program is to create modeling software that is human-oriented instead of tool-oriented. This kind of software is designed to infer a base shape given a very concise, natural, yet often ambiguous description. Such software will unleash artists' creativity and productivity. Expanding the current modeling toolkit with human-oriented software will not only speed up prototyping of 3D models, but also enable artists with little specialized 3D training to create high-quality models. ***In the long term, I am envisioning shape modeling software for various industries and applications, where traditional computer modeling tools coexist with human-oriented tools based on natural inputs. This effort will eventually reshape our way of thinking about modeling shapes: from a tedious process to an effortless recording of one's imagination.******In this proposal, I will focus on sketches and gesture drawings as the main forms of natural inputs. Initial sketches can be astonishingly close to the final rendered image of a posed 3D model yet are still used only as a reference in industrial modeling pipelines. In contrast, I focus on using sketches directly as an input to the modeling/animation system, aiming to sidestep the tedious manual modeling or posing. While we are far from algorithmically interpreting natural sketches and gesture drawings, we can come significantly closer to the goal with the proposed projects. **