Final Report Summary - IMODEL (Intelligent Shape Modeling)
Digital 3D content creation and modeling has become an indispensable part of our technology-driven society. Any modern design and manufacturing process involves manipulation of digital 3D shapes. In fact, many industries have been long expecting ubiquitous 3D as the next revolution in multimedia. Yet, contrary to "traditional" media such as digital music and video, 3D content creation and editing is not accessible to the general public, and 3D geometric data is not nearly as wide-spread as it has been anticipated. Despite extensive geometric modeling research in the past two decades, 3D modeling is still a restricted domain and demands tedious, time consuming and expensive work effort even from trained professionals, namely engineers, designers, and digital artists. Geometric modeling is reported to constitute one of the lowest-productivity components of the product life cycle.
The major reason for 3D shape modeling remaining inaccessible and tedious is that our current geometry representation and modeling algorithms focus on low-level mathematical properties of the shapes, entirely missing structural, contextual or semantic information. It is an unavoidable consequence that current modeling systems are unintuitive, inefficient and difficult for humans to work with. Instead of continuing on the current incremental research path, a concentrated effort is required to fundamentally rethink the shape modeling process and re-align research agendas, putting high-level shape structure and function at the core. As part of the ERC Starting Grant project ``iModel’’, we have developed 3D shape modeling tools that enable both professionals and lay users to design, animate and even 3D-print their own objects intuitively and efficiently. The software tools and user interface devices created as part of this project are already available in open-source and open-hardware form to benefit industry practitioners, scientific researchers and the general public.
The major reason for 3D shape modeling remaining inaccessible and tedious is that our current geometry representation and modeling algorithms focus on low-level mathematical properties of the shapes, entirely missing structural, contextual or semantic information. It is an unavoidable consequence that current modeling systems are unintuitive, inefficient and difficult for humans to work with. Instead of continuing on the current incremental research path, a concentrated effort is required to fundamentally rethink the shape modeling process and re-align research agendas, putting high-level shape structure and function at the core. As part of the ERC Starting Grant project ``iModel’’, we have developed 3D shape modeling tools that enable both professionals and lay users to design, animate and even 3D-print their own objects intuitively and efficiently. The software tools and user interface devices created as part of this project are already available in open-source and open-hardware form to benefit industry practitioners, scientific researchers and the general public.