The Centre aims to promote innovation and education
in the use of computer-based technologies for the production and analysis
of digital media. The goal is to link creative activity in the digital
arts with cutting-edge enabling technologies in computer science.
VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video
VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modelling from video
VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D
models of objects from video—models that might be inserted into a
video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence.
The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object
to be modelled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting
the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information
obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple
2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model.
Each of the sketching operations in VideoTrace provides an intuitive
and powerful means of modelling shape from video, and executes
quickly enough to be used interactively. Immediate feedback
allows the user to model rapidly those parts of the scene which are
of interest and to the level of detail required. The combination of
automated and manual reconstruction allows VideoTrace to model
parts of the scene not visible, and to succeed in cases where purely
automated approaches would fail..
The Siggraph paper describing VideoTrace is available here(pdf 6MB), and an avi of the video below which outlines how it works is available here, with a more compressed version here. There's a Google Tech Talk about the program and the project here.
Status
Videotrace is being commercialised by Punchcard. See www.punchcard.com.au for status and release information, and for more examples of Videotrace in action.
As a part of the commercialisation process Videotrace has been voted in as a finalist in The Next Big Thing program. If you visit The Next Big Thing Videotrace page and vote for Videotrace in the people's choice award it will certainly help the process of getting Videotrace noticed, and its development funded.
Applications
There are a number of applications of the VideoTrace technology, including modelling parts of the real world for insertion into virtual worlds. You may want to model your house, in order to put it into Google Earth, or your couch, in order to take it with you into Second Life, for example.
The applications that we're most interested in right now are
VideoTrace is currently at the prototype stage. We're looking for commercial partners that can develop it to the point whereby we might release it. The first beta test in progress, and we expect to run another in the near future.
If you are interested in this commercial development, or would like to be place on the mailing list so you can be notified of further developments and particularly the release of the final version please email VideoTrace@acvt.com.au.
VideoTrace is covered by two patent applications, each of which has been filed both in Australia and the US.
Further directions
We're currently developing further modelling interactions to increase both the power and flexibility of the modelling process. We're working on interactive dense reconstruction, organic shapes, de- and re-linghting for model-based video editing, deformable objects and dynamic scenes, amongst other ideas.
We are particularly interested in teaming with groups who have interesting industry-motivated problems to which VideoTrace might be applied. If you are interested in working with us please email VideoTrace@acvt.com.au.
Jobs and such
We're currently advertising for a post-doc to join the team working on VideoTrace, but we'll be looking for suitably skilled software engineers soon too hopefully. If you have the right background we're also looking for PhD students to work on this project and a few related ones. This would require that you have a very good honours degree, or an equivalent qualification (like a relevant Masters for instance). Please email VideoTrace@acvt.com.au if you are interested.
Media
Wer'e getting quite a lot of coverage on all sorts of media. The following is a (random) subset of the outlets that have featured VideoTrace:
The Channel Ten News did a story on VideoTrace in June 2008
