Warpy: Contextual and Multi-view Indirect 3D Curve Sketching in Augmented Reality.

Rawan Alghofaili1, Cuong Nguyen2, Vojtěch Krs2, Nathan Carr2, Radomír Měch2, Lap-Fai Yu1
1 George Mason University, 2Adobe Research,
a street intersection, middle image shows a user wearing a VR headset while his gaze is being tracked

We introduce Wᴀʀᴘʏ, a tablet-based 3D curve drawing tool for augmented reality. Our curve drawing method facilitates the creation of complex (e.g. spirals) and large-scale curves. These curves enable us to add (a) decorative elements to a scene in-situ. These curves can also be used to guide animations by serving as motion paths. (b-c) For example, a user can draw a path for an airplane that flies through a sculpture. Because a tablet's screen size may restrict the size and angle of curves users can create, we introduce a novel multi-view drawing method that enables users to draw (d) large-scale curves from multiple angles. The user can draw multiple small curves (e.g. at the left, top and right sides of the arc) and our tool will automatically stitch them to form a large curve.

Abstract

Three-dimensional curve drawing in Augmented Reality (AR) enables users to create 3D curves that fit within the real-world scene. It has applications in 3D design, sculpting, and animation. However, the task complexity increases when the desirable path for the curve is obstructed by the physical environment or by what the camera can see. For example, it is difficult to draw a curve that wraps around an object or scales to out-of-reach places.

We propose Wᴀʀᴘʏ, an environment-aware 3D curve drawing tool for mobile AR. Our system enables users to draw freeform curves from a distance in AR by combining 2D-to-3D sketch inference with geometric proxies. Geometric Proxies can be obtained via 3D scanning or from a list of pre-defined primitives. Wᴀʀᴘʏ also provides a multi-view mode to enable users to sketch a curve from multiple viewpoints, which is useful if the target curve cannot fit within the camera’s field of view. We conducted two user studies and found that Wᴀʀᴘʏ can be a viable tool to help users create complex and large curves in AR.

Index Terms

Computing methodologies—Computer graphics— Graphics systems and interfaces—Mixed/augmented Reality

Publication

Paper (55 MB)
Paper (9 MB)
Supplementary Material (3 MB)

BibTex


@inproceedings{warpy,
 author = {Alghofaili, Rawan and Nguyen, Cuong and Krs, Vojtěch and Carr, Nathan and Měch, Radomír and Yu, Lap-Fai},
 title = {Warpy: Multi-view Curve Sketching in Augmented Reality},
  year = {2023},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)}
}

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by NSF grants (award numbers: 1942531 and 2128867). We would like to thank Adobe Research for their generous donations to the GMU's DCXR group. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.