VideoTrace: create 3D models by tracing 2D video

Thursday, June 25, 2009


The University of Adelaide and Oxford Brookes Computer Vision Group have developed VideoTrace, an astonishing program that allows you to trace an object in a conventional, 2D video and quickly generate a 3D model of it.

In the video below you watch as footage of an SUV is traced, then that footage is used to spawn a detailed, CGI model of the SUV. Then the SUV and the CGI model version are shown parked beside each other, both looking like real trucks as the camera moves around them.

The possibilities are dizzying. If this thing could be hooked up to a 3D printer, you could make your own replica props tracing scenes from your favorite movies. Imagine you're watching an old horror movie, and you see a statue in the background you really like. You could trace that statue onscreen, then print out a 3D copy to display in your home. I'd love to see how well this program handles the human form. Is it possible to trace old footage of Jane Fonda in Barbarella, let's say, and then develop a 3D model of her? And could I then print out my own 3D copy of Barbarella? Please?

The project is apparently still in beta, and the Australian company Punchcard is trying to secure the funding to make it available to the public. Hopefully that will happen soon. Something like this reminds you that we're actually living in the future.

VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video from gallo1 on Vimeo.



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1 comments:

* October 3, 2009 at 12:31 AM  

Wow... Thats pretty damn cool. As a 3d artist and a filmmaker, this could be pretty useful. I was first thinking that the detail wasn't that amazing. But when they duplicated that 4X4 and put them side to side... I realized most people would not even have realized the 2nd car was CGI. Well done. Very awesome.

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"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden

Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?

Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.

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