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Lightspeed Design to Debut DepthQ HD 3D Projector at Siggraph 2008
Alioscopy to Show 3DHD-40 Autostereoscopic Display at Siggraph

News Highlights

Japanese team developing palm-held 3D display

We're a month late on this, but some Japanese researchers have an interesting approach to developing a small 3D display. The picture in the linked article is too small to see many details, but you can see the mosaic of panels that make up the cube.

A prototype of the gCubik, a 10-centimetre (3.9-inch) cube which can show 3D images with no special glasses seen in Tokyo last week. Researchers in Japan are developing a gadget that could enable people to hold a three-dimensional image of someone in the palm of their hand.

Handyscan 3D has been added to the Cameras section. A main selling point for Creaform's Handyscan laser scanner is its combination of self positioning with mobility.

Developed and manufactured by Creaform, the Handyscan 3D line-up of self-positioning,  truly portable handheld 3D laser scanners are innovative devices enabling fast and high-accuracy 3D scanning.  The Handyscan 3D laser scanners offer high resolution and high accuracy 3D scanning, as well as powerful functionalities such as True automatic multiresolution and Dual scanning mode. They are easy to use and learn, lightweight and affordable systems that proved useful for reverse engineering, inspeciton, Styling, Design & Analysis and medical applications. Compatible with the major post-treatment and reverse engineering software, the Handyscan 3D line-up of scanners is powered by VxScan, Creaform's proprietary data acquisition software.

To learn more about these innovative and powerful laser scanners, visit Creaform's website at www.creaform3d.com

Stanford camera chip can see in 3D

Stanford University researchers have developed an interesting new image sensor. Instead of capturing a single planar image it captures multiple overlapping image patches. Software can analyze the overlapping pixels to determine depth in the scene. Another potential use of the technology is to reduce image noise.

New Scientist recently ran a story about a "Smart Lego" digital modeling interface developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Posey is a research project that allows the user to model and animate a character or object in real time.

In 2000 MERL had a similar project that was more Lego-like in that it actually used blocks. You can read more about it here.

Recently Stanford University announced a project called Dryad. It's a free program allowing users to create three-dimensional tree models for use in virtual worlds and games. Technology Review has a write up on the innovative program.

Here's an interesting video from EE Times.

A researcher from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (Cambridge Mass.) explains a complete real-time three-dimensional television capture and display system. It's complex but well explained.

MIT's Media Lab is experimenting with augmented/mixed reality. Check out the video of their "Installation" project.

A few years ago 3dcgi reported about 3DV Systems and their ZCam product. At the time it was targeted at television studios with the goal of replacing or augmenting chroma keying. Now the company is attracting attention with a consumer version of ZCam. 3DV is looking for partners so there's not a product for sale yet, but the prototype is the size and shape of a webcam.

This time around 3DV is targeting the game industry. Following the success of the Nintendo Wii's motion controller they feel that the ZCam can one up the Wii by allowing players to use any object as the controller, including your hands.

ZCam emits infrared pulses and uses the time-of-flight principle to determine a target's depth. Software can use a combination of the depth information and the 2D image to determine what the users is doing.

Visit Cnet news.com for some recent press coverage.

While they're making the most noise 3DV is not alone in their quest to tap into the gaming market. MESA Imaging has developed similar technology.

Brown University demonstrates Drawing on Air system

It's been a tick since we've heard any news on the 3D drawing front, but a number of computer scientists from Brown University are putting the art back in the proverbial foreground with its Drawing on Air installation.

Panoram's 24-Inch Display Does Hi-Def in 3D

If you’re shopping for a monitor in the 24-inch range, now you have a new spec to consider along with resolution, color range and refresh times: 3D capability. Panoram Technologies, a provider of large-scale displays for business and government, released its PSP 2400 desktop monitor on Tuesday, which not only spans 24 inches at 1920 x 1200 resolution, it can display images in full 3D.

Who shows the best view of 3D 'Beowulf'?

Cnet answers this question with a detailed article comparing Imax 3D, Real D, and Dolby 3D. The article briefly covers the technology behind each approach. I won't spoil the surprise of who's best so read the article!

Adobe shows off 3D camera tech

Today, if you want to trim all the distracting background out of a picture--say, the crowd behind your daughter playing soccer--you have to do a lot of artful selection with high-powered software such as Photoshop. But what if your computer understood the depth of the image, just as you did when you took the picture, and could be told to just erase everything that's a certain distance behind your kid?

Another video can be found at Gizmodo.

ITRI demonstrates 3D digital photo frame

The 3D imaging technology is based on a micro-redardation array and allows people to view a 3D image without the need of special stereoscopic glasses. The technology currently is limited by poor resolutions and cannot be viewed by multiple viewers from a variety of angles. ITRI expects to fully develop the technology within five years.

The technology behind 3D movies
This illustrated guide from c|net concisely describes technologies from Dolby, Real D, and others.

ICT Researchers Win "Best Emerging Technology" Award at SIGGRAPH 2007

Researchers at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) along with their collaborators have devised a reproducible, low-cost 3D display system that requires no special glasses, and is viewable from all angles by multiple users. This system allows computer generated 3D objects to be seen in new ways, and will impact the future of interactive systems.

The Interactive 360 degree Light Field Display (3D Display) was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 2007, and won an award for "Best Emerging Technology."

Here is the project's web site, Rendering for an Interactive 360º Light Field Display. It includes a paper and downloadable video. Or you can watch the video stream from YouTube.

Philips announces WOWzone 3D wall

Philips WOWzone multi­screen 3D wall consists of nine 42­inch Philips 3D displays in a 3x3 display set­up. The viewers literally become part of the action in the huge immersive 3 x 2 meters 3D experience space: the WOWzone. The WOWzone creates a new breed of high-impact 3D multimedia presentations in a flexible configuration as one single large 3D display or by displaying dedicated content on the individual screens.

source: engadget

Young Designer's 3-D Display Wins Presidents' Scholarship

George F. Hotz, a 17-year-old from Glen Rock, N.J., won the 2007 IEEE Presidents' Scholarship for a color 3-D display that is viewable from all angles. He received the US $10 000 scholarship for his project “I Want a Holodeck” at the 58th Annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held from 13 to 18 May in Albuquerque, N.M.

For his project, he mounted a screen and a digital light projector (DLP) on a spinning platform. He spun the projector very quickly while displaying different cross sections of a particular image. Because these cross sections were displayed so rapidly on the screen, it tricked the eye into seeing the image in three dimensions.

This makes two years in a row that 3D related projects have won at the International Science and Engineering Fair. The concept of Hotz's project reminds me of Actuality's Perspecta. Unfortunately I couldn't find video or pictures of the final project, only a blog documenting the reverse engineering of the DLP chip.

Samsung adds 3D technology to its High Definition DLP TV

Samsung DLP HDTVs run at 120 Hz which incidentally makes them a perfect fit for LCD shutter glasses. Presumably they run at 120 Hz to combat the rainbow affect sometimes seen with a slow moving color wheel. Samsung is making the best of this feature by coming out with LCD shutter glasses and software to turn the TV into a 3D display. ZDnet's David Berlind has a article and video interview showing and describing the product.

Maximum PC magazine writer Katherine Stevenson doesn't have a high opinion of current 3D displays and she is certainly not alone in this view. However, Katherine is intriqued by a new player, PureDepth.

PureDepth uses 2 LCD screens to simulate depth. This approach reminds me of the DepthCube from LightSpace Technologies, though the DepthCube stacks 20 LCDs and is bulkier and more expensive. 2 LCDs doesn't seem like much, but if they provide a good 3D image at a reasonable cost it might be just the right balance.

This YouTube video does a good job explaining PureDepth and its target markets.

Recently some researchers from the Japan firm NTT showed off a tangible 3D system that combines a display and a haptic glove. It's similar in concept to the Reachin Display and SenseGraphics' Mobile Immersive Workbench, though it uses a glove as the input device.

Technology Review has another article about an MIT project to develop Holographic Video for Your Home. The article covers some details not touched upon in the previous article and has some pictures.

Previously we've written about David, software that enables you to use you webcam as a 3D laser scanner. Today we're reporting on another inexpensive scanning system, Milkscanner. You read correctly, milk is what makes the system work.

A rig built from Legos holds the camera and serves as a container for the object being scanned and the milk. The system works by filling the container with a little bit of milk, a image slice is captured, more milk is added, and the cycle continues until the object is completely covered by milk.

The process is essentially building a 3D texture. Here's a description from the web site.

The Milkscanner is a tool that allows the scanning of objects and creates a Displacement map for use with Moviesandbox or any other 3D App that would allow for displacement mapping.

The web site also contains a video of the process, software, and instructions for recreating the Milkscanner.

Source: Gearlog.

Fab@Home: 3D objects from your printer for under $2,500

While it's not quite 3DCGI Fab@Home is an interesting project that will need 3D models to drive its creations. Here's a quote,

Malone's goal was to build something cheap and reliable, something that hobbyists could use to kickstart a "home fabbing revolution" that would have analogues to the personal computer revolution that hobbyists helped to launch in the early 1970s. The result was Fab@Home, an open-source project that provides drivers, applications software, and detailed design plans for assembling a three-dimensional desktop fabricator. Total cost: under $2,400.

Technology Review recently wrote about Practical Holographic Video, a project at MIT with the goal of developing a holographic projector that can display the same resolution as analog television for a couple hundred dollars. The current system called Mark III is not ready to be a consumer product as it is monochrome and the displayed image is about the size of a Rubik's Cube. Mark IV should support a full range of colors and be able to display images the size of a desktop PC monitor.

Image based modeling programs have been around for a while and most of them require user interaction and many photographs to create detailed models. A new service called Fotowoosh aims to simplify things by allowing anyone to create a three dimensional model from a single photograph. The result isn't as impressive as the detailed models created by other software packages, but the goals are not the same.

Techcrunch's article gives a quick overview of Fotowoosh and provides pictures and links to a video. For more in depth coverage check out Technology Review's article. Here are some quotes from the Technology Review article that focus on future improvements to Fotowoosh.

Right now, the system isn't very good at separating discrete objects that should be in the foreground, such as pedestrians in a street scene, from background surfaces, such as walls. But Hoiem is working on that. "In a year or possibly less, you'll be able to take a photo of an alley with all sorts of cars and people, and create a 3-D model where those are all seen as separate 3-D foreground objects," he says.

Eventually, Hoiem's work could change the way robots use computer vision to navigate their way through obstacle-strewn environments. Hoiem says that he and his colleagues are also working on ways to create more-complicated 3-D models by processing multiple photographs of the same area. In addition, they're working on the idea of animating 3-D scenes such as busy streets by predicting the directions pedestrians and cars would have moved in the several seconds following the click of the photographer's shutter.

3dcgi has covered a number of 3D cameras that capture static models, but if still images aren't your thing you might want to check out Advanced Scientific Concepts, Inc. Their 3D Video Cameras use Lidar to capture a depth for each pixel. O'Reilly Radar has a link to a Google Tech Talk given by the folks at Advanced Scientific Concepts.

Here's an interesting concept. A paint system that allows artists to use real brushes and even their hands instead of a stylus or mouse. You don't really use paint with the brushes, but you do use water.

The Light Strokes OptiPaint™ system comes with a Photoshop plugin so there's no need for most artists to learn a new software program.

When looking at some of the images and videos in the Gallery you might notice banding in the paint strokes. These bands are actually frame captures and since OptiPaint™ operates at 60 frames per second you'll see these bands if your brush strokes are too fast. As technology improves this limitation will likely go away. This CGSociety article explains the technology behind OptiPaint™ in more detail.

If you've ever wondered how GPUs generated realtime 3DCGI checkout Computer magazines article on How GPUs Work. It's written by David Luebke from NVIDIA Research and Greg Humphreys from the University of Virginia and covers the various stages of the graphics pipeline, including the evolution from fixed function to unified shaders.

ACM Siggraph recently launched a new service called Encore. With Encore you can watch videos of past Siggraph's including courses, sketches, and papers. As of late February 2007 videos are available for Siggraph 2003, 2004, and 2005. The 2006 videos will be available soon.

Want a deal on a 3D LCD monitor? If you pre-order the 22" Widescreen iZ3D monitor before March 15th, 2007 you can get it for $819. After March 15th the price will go up to $999. Note that 3dcgi has not tested this monitor and makes no money in promoting this deal.

DAZ|Studio is a "feature rich 3D figure posing and animation tool" with perhaps its most interesting feature being its price, or lack there of. DAZ|Studio if offered free and DAZ is upfront about the reason why.

DAZ Productions has a made a committment to keep the DAZ|Studio core application free to the public for as long as possible. In order for this to be possible, DAZ relies on the revenues generated by the purchase of content available in the DAZ online store. The more people that purchase regularly from DAZ, the more development that can be subsidized and the longer the DAZ|Studio core will remain free.

Check out this page for more free graphics and video programs.

Peek through the Looking Glass with LG3D-LiveCD

Sun's Project Looking Glass is a 3-D desktop environment for Linux, Windows, and Solaris. If you are interested in seeing what it offers but are not ready to install the packages directly on your system, you can still get a feel for the avant-garde interface with the just-released LG3D-LiveCD 3.0.

Roll your own 3D photography on the cheap

Phil Glatz has posted a step-by-step tutorial for creating your own 3D photography with a couple of digital cameras and some free software.

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 News Roundup.

• CES 2007 Interview: TDVision TDVisor finally the 3D HMD Consumer Solution
• Philips Demonstrates 3D Displays at CES
• DDD Creates Another 3D LCD Technology for Games, Movies
• Chimei gets into iZ3D game with 22-inch LCD
• LG Flatron M400D 3D LCD Monitor
• Hands On with Novint's 3D Game Controller
• Novint Falcon crazay mouse gets a price, release date

DAVID software turns your webcam into a 3D laser scanner.

Thanks to folks who see value in "free," a few clever programmers have crafted the DAVID Laserscanner software, which turns your webcam into an ultra-sensative laser recorder and then reconstructs the object on-screen based on the breaks in the beam.

The January/February 2007 issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications is titled Sketch-Based Interaction. Along with an introduction to the field articles include:

• Sketch Interpretation Using Multiscale Models of Temporal Patterns
• Advances in Mathematical Sketching: Moving Toward the Paradigm's Full Potential
• Free-Form Sketching of Self-Occluding Objects
• Sketch-Based 3D-Shape Creation for Industrial Styling Design
• A Sketch-Based Interface for Clothing Virtual Characters

Checkout this 3dcgi article for a few more examples of sketch based interfaces.

Imaginality Unleashed combines 3D modeling with 2D paper.

This Beta Preview from MindSpace Solutions enables users to experiment with an augmented reality interface using only the software, some print outs, and a web cam.

Recently we reported on a program in development at Microsoft called PhotoSynth. The technology preview is now available. You can find it here.

Vizoo Cheoptics360 XL Amazing Holographic Display. This large format display looks very impressive in videos. If it works as well in real world situations Vizoo has a hit on their hands. Here's a quote about how the technology works.

Cheoptics360™ is a four-sided pyramid manufactured of transparent material so the audience can see through it from every side. Inside the pyramid chamber the audience can see objects that seem to be freely floating video images and computer graphics. This is done through surface mirroring and reflections. The pyramid itself is used as a kind of prism that assembles light from four video projections into a solid image.

“We simply use physical space to create a three dimensional feeling of reality as though the object was actually present in the space. In future, using this technique physical space itself will create 3D depth,” says Peter Simonsen.

More links: Ramboll, Cheoptics360 mini-site.

Archived news stories

Read about cutting-edge 3-D computer graphics methods, techniques, hardware, and software. Articles cover 3-D cameras, autostereoscopic displays for entertainment and visualization, and 3-D modeling.

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