Abstract
This paper presents an approach to realize a tool for interactive and intuitive deformation of 3D shapes, to be used, for example as a character animation tool. The approach combines a fast algorithm for 3D free form deformation that employs compactly supported radial basis functions (CSRBFs) with a high degrees-of-freedom input device of hand joint angles, namely, the CyberGlove. While shape deformation algorithm by using CSRBFs allows for fast and reasonable shape deformations, it is not a simple task to position the CSRBFs so that desired shape deformations can be created. In our approach, the 10 CSRBFs are attached to the tip of the fingers of the CyberGlove worn on both hands of the users. This allows the user an intuitive manipulation of 3D shapes in a manner somewhat similar to clay modeling. While the shape deformation algorithm does not produce physically accurate deformation, the deformation is fast, plausible and quite useful. For example, using a 32k polygon mesh, a deformation involving all the 15k vertices can be produced at about 30 frames-per-second.
