Non-contact Virtual Clay Modeling Interface Using Multi-viewpoint Images

This paper proposes a "non-contact virtual clay modeling interface." We developed a prototype of a three-dimensional modeling system that allows the designer to deform the "virtual clay" by his or her hand movements. In our proposing method, the user's hand movement is observed using multiple cameras to estimate its position and orientation. The virtual clay is modeled by Catmull-Clark subdivision surface. Using the estimated hand position and orientation, the virtual clay is deformed based on the free-form deformation technique. advantages. The first is that it provides a non-contact interface. The second is that our system uses only normal CCD cameras that are commonly used and are not expensive. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the hand representation and presents the outlines of the hand position and orientation estimation algorithm. Section 3 describes the modeling of the virtual clay and the deformation method. Section 4 describes the implementation of the virtual clay modeling interface. Finally, we conclude this paper and describe future works in section 5. 2 Hand Posture Estimation