Mjolnir: talks
Sketch and sculpt interfaces have often been touted as "natural" approaches to interactive design. while these metaphors are indeed a promising medium of visual communication, there are a number of inherent limitations in the motor control of the human hand, drawing or gesturing skill, perception and the ambiguities of inferences, that make the leap from 2D input to 3D shape a challenging task. In this talk Karan will present recent research and open challenges in the perception of shape from sketch/sculpt style input and various systems (www.ilovesketch.com, www.meshmixer.com, www.crossshade.com) that facilitate the leap from 2D input to 3D models despite these limitations
Karan Singh is a professor in Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research interests lie in artist driven interactive graphics, spanning geometric and anatomic modeling, character animation and sketch based interfaces. He has been a technical lead on two commercial projects that won technical Oscars (Maya, Paraform). These software systems are the current industry standards for animation and reverse engineering respectively. He is a co-founder of Arcestra, a sketch based software solution for architecture and industrial design. He lead the design of two research systems based on sketch and sculpt metaphors (www.ilovesketch.com, www.meshmixer.com), that have been featured on leading design forums, and co-directs a reputed graphics and HCI lab, DGP. He was the R&D Director for the 2005 Oscar winning animated short Ryan and had his first exhibition of electronic art titled Labyrinths, in 2010. His current research focus is on 3D shape perception and understanding and sketch/touch based interfaces.