Patent Application
20220126519
Modern animation uses physical models as visual aids to create digital characters. For instance, animators may use a physical model to visualize characters in the physical world before creating a digital character. Viewing a physical model in the real world may allow the animator to study the model in its natural state.
Non-limiting and non-exhaustive examples of the disclosure are described, including various examples of the disclosure, with reference to the figures, in which:
In computer-generated renderings, whether for still or animated output, a physical model of an object being rendered may be utilized by a user as a guide or reference, particularly when it comes to creating poses for that model. For example, wooden jointed mannequins are a reference tool for users dealing with humanoid figures. The physical model may allow the user to quickly manipulate the pose directly and view the result before attempting to adjust and render the subject on a computer or another digital device. Copying physical movements to a digital rendering may lead to human error and significant time spent visually comparing the animator-created digital image of the model with the physical model. Recreating a digital version of the physical model can be a difficult and time-consuming process.
Physical three-dimensional (3D) printed multipart objects, as described herein, provide enhanced functionality for rendering digital models. From the user's point of view, a 3D-printed model can more closely resemble the object being rendered and can thus serve as a more accurate reference. Physical 3D-printed multipart objects may be printed from a 3D digital design that is based on an underlying digital render model. In addition to the shape and texture of the object to be rendered, the 3D digital design may include physical joints that provide a range of motion analogous to the underlying digital render model that can be used to generate digitally posed renderings of the object in various poses. The 3D digital design may also include markings identifying the individual parts. For example, a part of a 3D digital design may include markings that identify two portions of an arm that can be moved into various orientations with respect to one another.
A user may pose a physical 3D-printed multipart object printed from the 3D digital design. A camera may capture an image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object and determine the pose based on the physical markings. The system may generate a digitally posed rendering of the object in the determined pose based on the underlying digital render model. The system may capture images and identify different poses as the parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object are manipulated. Using information and constraints defined by the underlying 3D digital design, the system generates digitally posed renderings in poses corresponding to those captured in the images of the physical 3D-printed multipart object. The physical 3D-printed multipart object with markings decreases time and increases the accuracy and precision associated with generating digitally posed renderings of the 3D digital design.
The examples of this disclosure may be further understood by reference to the drawings, wherein like parts are designated by like numerals throughout. It will be readily understood that the components of the disclosed examples, as generally described and illustrated in the figures herein, could be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations. Thus, the following detailed description of the examples of the systems and methods of the disclosure is not intended to limit the scope of the disclosure, as claimed, but is merely representative of possible examples of the disclosure. In addition, the steps of a method do not necessarily need to be executed in any specific order, or even sequentially, nor need the steps to be executed only once, unless otherwise specified.
In some cases, well-known features, structures, or operations are not shown or described in detail. Furthermore, the described features, structures, or operations may be combined in any suitable manner. It will also be readily understood that the components of the examples as generally described and illustrated in the figures herein could be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations.
Several aspects of the examples described may be implemented as software modules or components. As used herein, a software module or component may include any type of computer instruction or computer-executable code located within a memory device and/or transmitted as electronic signals over a system bus or wired or wireless network. A software module or component may, for instance, comprise physical or logical blocks of computer instructions, which may be organized as a routine, program, object, component, data structure, etc., that performs tasks or implements particular abstract data types.
In certain examples, a particular software module or component may comprise disparate instructions stored in different locations of a memory device, which together implement the described functionality of the module. Indeed, a module or component may comprise a single instruction or many instructions and may be distributed over several different code segments, among different programs, and across several memory devices. Some examples may be practiced in a distributed computing environment where tasks are performed by a remote processing device linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, software modules or components may be located in local and/or remote memory storage devices. In addition, data being tied or rendered together in a database record may be resident in the same memory device, or across several memory devices, and may be linked together in fields of a record in a database across a network.
Examples may be provided as a computer program product, including a non-transitory computer and/or machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that may be used to program a computer (or another electronic device) to perform processes described herein. For example, a non-transitory computer-readable medium may store instructions that, when executed by a processor of a computer system, cause the processor to perform certain methods disclosed herein. The non-transitory computer-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, hard drives, floppy diskettes, optical disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic or optical cards, solid-state memory devices, or other types of machine-readable media suitable for storing electronic and/or processor-executable instructions.
As previously described, the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may comprise physical markings associated with physically orientable parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. In some examples, each part of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may comprise a single marking. Each marking may identify a part, an orientation of the part, and/or a combination thereof. The physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may be based on an underlying digitally rendered model of the object. Any number of digitally posed renderings 106 of the object may be generated as the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 is manipulated (i.e., placed in different poses by re-orienting the physically orientable parts). In some examples, the user 101 may move the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 into various poses to generate a set of different digitally posed renderings 106 for storage on the computing device 104. In some examples, the digitally posed rendering 106 may be generated by a display subsystem.
A 3D printer may print the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 based on the 3D digital design. The underlying digitally rendered design may have significantly more detail than the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. Accordingly, manipulation of a relatively low-detail physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may result in relatively high-detail digitally posed renderings 106 of the object for display.
The physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may comprise markings corresponding to those on the 3D digital design. For example, the 3D digital design associated with the illustrated dragon may include markings on the upper and lower portions of the right and left arms. The physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 is printed to include corresponding markings on the upper and lower portion of the right and left arms. For example, the 3D digital design may include digital markings that are a part of the object to be printed. Thus, when the 3D digital design is printed, the resulting physical 3D-printed multipart object has physical markings that are in the locations specified by the 3D digital design. The markings do not need to be manually added, positioned or aligned since they are specified by the 3D digital design.
As described herein, each orientable part of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may comprise a single physical marking or multiple physical markings. The markings may be automatically added by the computer system based on the location of joints separated distinct, orientable parts of the object. In some examples, a user may specific joint locations and/or orientable parts of the object and add markings to the 3D digital design to become a part of the subsequently created physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. In some example, the user may specify joint locations and/or orientable parts of the object when created the digital render model. The system may generate the 3D digital design to include markings associated with each of the user-specified joint locations and/or orientable parts of the object. A 3D printer may be used to print the 3D digital design with physical markings specified by the 3D digital design, which are in turn based on the user-specified joints and/or orientable parts of the user-created digital render model. Accordingly, the user is able to generate a physical object from a digital model and map captured movement back to the digital model with minimal effort on the part of the user.
In various example, each marking may be, for example, a color, a QR code, a line, steganographic information, another form of identification, and/or a combination thereof. The user may change the orientation of the orientable part(s) of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 through physical manipulation.
In some examples, a pose determination subsystem detects orientations of the orientable parts by comparing the relative location of the physical markings. For example, the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may resemble a dragon. A user may pose the tail of the dragon starting with the tail on the left and ending with the tail on the right. The markings on the tail may identify the orientable part as the tail. The change in orientation of the tail and/or an amount of change in the tail may be determined by determining the change in position and orientation of the markings on the tail with respect to the position and orientation of markings on the body to which the tail is attached. The relative position and orientation of the two markings may allow the system to detect the orientation of the two parts and/or the joint between the two parts.
To detect the changes in orientation of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102, the system may use a camera to capture an image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. In some examples, the camera may be a part of an image processing subsystem, the computing device 104, another part of the system, and/or a combination thereof. The image processing subsystem may analyze the captured image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. The image processing subsystem may identify the markings on the 3D-printed part in the image. In some examples, the image processing subsystem may detect which 3D digital design corresponds to the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. For instance, the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 may include physical markings that identify each orientable part and an additional marking or markings that enable the system to determine to which 3D digital design the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 corresponds (e.g., from a database of multiple 3D digital designs). In some examples, the system may utilize data associated with a marking to compare the marking of the 3D digital design to the marking of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102.
The pose determination subsystem may utilize the identified markings, the 3D digital design, and/or the underlying digital render model to detect orientations of the physically orientable parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. For example, a tree may have a marking on a first branch and a second branch. The orientation of the first branch may be changed. The pose determination subsystem may detect a change between the marking on the first branch and the marking on the second branch. The change in relative position between the markings may allow the pose determination subsystem to detect a relative change in orientation of the first branch.
A display subsystem may render a digitally posed rendering of the object for display on an electronic display in a pose corresponding to the pose of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102. The pose determination subsystem may review each part of the physical 3D-printed multipart object 102 to detect the parts that have a change in orientation and the parts that have no change in orientation.
As another example, a 3D-printed multipart object resembling a cat may be printed based on a 3D digital design. The 3D digital design includes digital markings that identify articulation points of the cat (i.e., parts of the cat that can be re-oriented relative to other parts of the cat). A 3D digital design of the cat can be printed by a 3D printer and is based on a digital render model of the cat that captures the render model's articulation capabilities.
The system can utilize captured images of the physical 3D-printed cat in different poses and generate digitally posed renderings of the cat in corresponding poses. In some examples, digital markings may identify positions of orientable parts of the cat. Each combination of different orientations of the orientable parts of the 3D digital design of the cat correspond to a unique pose of the cat.
Once the 3D digital design is printed as a physical 3D-printed multipart object, a user may change the orientation of a part or parts of the printed physical 3D-printed multipart object to select a pose of the object. The system captures an image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object in the selected pose. The system uses the markings on the 3D-printed multipart object to identify the pose (i.e., the orientation of the various orientable parts). For example, an image processing subsystem may analyze the captured image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object. The image processing subsystem may detect the markings on the physical 3D-printed multipart object. A pose determination subsystem may detect orientations of the physically orientable parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object based on the relative locations of the physical markings in the captured image. For example, the arm illustrated in
An image processing subsystem 412 may analyze a captured image of a physical 3D-printed multipart object that includes physical markings associated with physically orientable parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object. As described herein, the physical 3D-printed multipart object corresponds to a 3D digital design of the multipart object. The 3D digital design of the multipart object may be based on an underlying digital render model and include various markings associated with orientable parts of the object. The image processing subsystem 412 may capture an image or receive a captured image. In some examples, the image processing subsystem 412 may store the captured image. For example, an image may be captured of a physical 3D-printed multipart object resembling a cat. The captured image of the cat may be utilized to generate a digitally posed rendering of the cat.
A pose determination subsystem 414 may analyze images captured by the image processing subsystem 412 to detect orientations of the physically orientable parts of the physical 3D-printed multipart object based on the relative locations of the physical markings in the captured image. In some examples, the pose determination subsystem 414 detects orientations of the orientable parts of the 3D-printed multipart object by comparing the relative location of the physical markings. In some examples, the pose determination subsystem 414 stores the captured image.
The pose determination subsystem 414 may determine the orientation of each part based on the distance and/or an angle between a first marking and a second marking. In some examples, one of the plurality of markings identifies a first part of the physical 3D model and an orientation of a first part relative to a second part. For example, the system may identify an orientation of a lower portion of an arm relative to an upper portion of an arm.
A digital rendering subsystem 415 generates a digitally posed rendering of the object in a pose corresponding to the pose captured in the image of the 3D-printed multipart object. The display subsystem 416 may render the digitally posed rendering of the object for display on an electronic display or AR/VR headset.
A camera may capture, at 506, an image of the physical 3D-printed multipart object with the first orientable part in a second orientation different than the first orientation. The system may process, at 508, the captured image to detect the second orientation of the first orientable part using the physical markings. The system may generate, at 510, a digitally posed rendering of the object with the first part in the second orientation.
While specific examples and applications of the disclosure have been illustrated and described, it is to be understood that the disclosure is not limited to the precise configurations and components disclosed herein. Accordingly, many changes may be made to the details of the above-described examples without departing from the underlying principles of this disclosure. The scope of the present invention should, therefore, be determined only by the following claims.
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/US2019/042498 | 7/18/2019 | WO | 00 |
