Adding Depth to Classical Cartoon Animations

Theatres featuring stereoscopic projection such as IMAX become extremely popular in last decade and attract large audience. However, key limiting factor for such cinemas is expensive movie acquisition phase. Lack of depth information in classical film footage restricts offer to movies created by specialized multi-camera system or 3D computer animation. In this project we focus on developing a system that allows artists to add artificial depth information to classical cartoon animations. We first utilizes LazyBrush, flexible painting tool proposed in [13] to segment the image interactively and efficiently. Then we allow user to add depth value to every single regions we retrieved from the first step. The normals of the objects in the scene are then approximated with the help of the segmentation and depth information. With all the data we get from the previous steps, we are able to render the scene with realistic lighting and shading. By enhancing the image low-pass filtering the depth map, we are able to create stereoscopic 3D image that gives a very strong depth feel. And by applying proper shading to each region, we are able to get a final stereoscopic 3D effect that’s realistic and rich however simple in the underlying representation.