Computer-Assisted Realistic Drawing – DRAO

Drawing is a powerful support for creation and communication but requires significant artistic and technical skills to achieve convincing results. Our goal is to facilitate and accelerate drawing for amateurs as well as for expert designers and illustrators, with a particular emphasis on drawing plausible material and lighting effects. The first part of this project will be to observe how people draw with existing tools. To do so we will conduct an observational study where we will interview designers and illustrators and collect data by videotaping drawing sessions and by recording drawings with digital pens. In the second part of the project we will deduce from our observations new user interfaces and rendering algorithms that automate part of the drawing process and enrich 2D drawings with realistic rendering capabilities. We will combine computer vision and computer graphics techniques to estimate geometric information from sketches. We will then use this information to guide rendering algorithms that generate plausible depictions of material and lighting over the drawing. In the third part of the project, we plan to develop computer-assisted drawing lessons to teach amateurs to draw from photographs and 3D models. We will apply image analysis algorithms to estimate the structure of a photograph and use that structure as guidance for drawing. We also plan to use tangible interfaces and augmented reality to mix computer-generated guidance with drawing on real paper. To summarize, our work should make amateurs more confident in their drawing skills and should allow expert designers to produce complex illustrations more effectively.