3D Character Model Creation from Cel Animation and its Applications

For creating a cel animation, the animators often use 3D character models to add some effects on the character or to generate intermediate images between the key frames. However, it is troublesome and time-consuming task to create a 3D model. In this paper, we present an easy-to-use approach for creating a set of 3D models from the user-specified strokes on a 2D image sequence. The created 3D models can be used in cel animation editing systems for adding shadowing effects, textures, etc. Moreover, since the vertices of the 3D models have one-to-one mapping among frames, by using 3D morphing techniques, the approach can also be used to generate intermediate images from key images.