Flow Curves: an Intuitive Interface for Coherent Scene Deformation

Effective composition in visual arts relies on the principle of movement, where the viewer’s eye is directed along subjective curves to a center of interest. We call these curves subjective because they may span the edges and/or center-lines of multiple objects, as well as contain missing portions which are automatically filled by our visual system. By carefully coordinating the shape of objects in a scene, skilled artists direct the viewer’s attention via strong subjective curves. While traditional 2D sketching is a natural fit for this task, current 3D tools are object-centric and do not accommodate coherent deformation of multiple shapes into smooth flows. We address this shortcoming with a new sketch-based interface called Flow Curves which allows coordinating deformation across multiple objects. Core components of our method include an understanding of the principle of flow, algorithms to automatically identify subjective curve elements that may span multiple disconnected objects, and a deformation representation tailored to the view-dependent nature of scene movement. As demonstrated in our video, sketching flow curves requires significantly less time than using traditional 3D editing workflows.