Courtesy MASHABLE
A new, high-tech 3D coloring book app has been devised by Disney Research.
When the child starts colouring the page, the camera on a mobile device placed next to the child automatically detects the character being coloured in, and displays the 3D version in real-time, exactly the way the child coloured the character in.
A team of seven Disney Research scientists, along with folks from Switzerland’s EPFL and ETH Zurich, joined Sumner to create this new experience.
Disney usually leaves the techy stuff to Pixar, but the firm’s research division is working on hi-tech digital coloring books that come to life like magic.
The augmented reality colouring app has been trained to recognise 3D animated characters from regular 2D line-art representations of the same characters found in the official colouring book that has been programmed to work with it.
The researchers performed user tests on adults, finding that the participants were more motivated to draw and color, and 80 percent revealed they felt more connected to the animated character.
As the child progresses with coloring, the app uses the same colors on the 3-D model. This means as the user colors from the physical book, they can see their character getting filled with color at the same exact time in 3D on a smartphone or tablet.
The process is much harder than it sounds: The researchers must take into account different angles of the image-color on the front of a face will be different from the back of a head.
Very useful information for animation students. Thank you for your article.
Comments are closed.