Camera tricks allow 3D digital model scupting by hand

Dubbed Shape-It-Up, the tool interprets hand gestures, enabling designers to create and modify three-dimensional shapes using their hands as a ‘natural user interface’ instead of keyboard and mouse.

The tool’s algorithms recognise a hand gesture, understands that the hand is interacting with a shape and then modifies that shape in response to the hand interaction. A Microsoft Kinect depth-sensing camera observes and interprets hand movements and gestures.

The user is then able to create shapes in a computer by interacting with a virtual workspace as the shape is displayed on a large-screen monitor.

‘You create and modify shapes using hand gestures alone, no mouse or keyboard,’ said Karthik Ramani, Purdue University’s Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering. ‘By bringing hands into the virtual space with a single depth camera we are able to manipulate the 3D artefacts as if they actually exist.’

Researchers call the underlying technique shape–gesture–context interplay.

The tool is claimed to be an advance over a previous version that was limited to creating “rotationally symmetric” objects, or those having the same measurements on all sides.