Hands on virtual clay

This paper presents a new interaction system designed for hands-on 3D shape modeling and deformation through natural hand gestures. Our system is made of a Phantom haptic device coupled with a deformable foam ball that supports pressure sensors. These sensors detect forces exerted by the user's fingertips, and are used to control the configuration of a compliant virtual hand that is modeling soft virtual clay. During interaction, the user is provided both passive tactile feedback through the foam ball, and realistic visual feedback since the virtual hand deforms due to its interaction in the virtual environment. The combination of all these feedbacks provides the artist with a good immersion allowing for effective sculpting in a virtual world.

1 Introduction

Currently, 3D modeling systems do not offer the artist the possibility of sculpting virtual clay as naturally as he would do it with his hands. Generally, he must deal with the underlying mathematical representation of the model - for instance control points - to modify a surface. In recent years, several virtual clay models solved this problem, providing excellent clay-like behavior [3], [1]. But none of these systems provide a device that allow the user to sculpt the clay with a virtual hand, even though hands are the most natural tool which an artist would use. This is the problem addressed by this paper.