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Now in 3D: Copy and Paste!

Dennis Barker | Date: 02-09-11 | Comments

Researchers have developed a system for applying an old 2D trick to stereoscopic images.

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Now in 3D: Copy and Paste!
Animators, illustrators, design engineers and others creating 3D images have been deprived of one of the wonders of the modern age: copy and paste. But a new system promises to bring the power and convenience of copy/paste to the world of 3D image editing.

Wan-Yen Lo, of UC San Diego and University of Bern, along with Jeroen van Baar, of Disney Research Z�rich, and their colleagues, has developed a software system for stereoscopic copy and paste that will greatly simplify editing of 3D images. This development is just in time for what could be a proliferation of such images.

The boy and other elements were copied and pasted from a different image using new stereoscopic editing technology (source: ACM Siggraph and the researchers).

Composing a realistic-looking 3D image from different source materials currently requires meticulous, tedious work. Typical tasks include essentially painting shadows, textures and other artifacts by hand. Spatial and lighting differences between the copied graphic and the image it's pasted into have to be resolved. To avoid looking distorted, an image needs to include all the visual cues our eyes and brain know from reality.

As the research paper explains, "3D copy & paste has to take stereopsis into account and avoid stereopsis rivalry: conﬂicting cues to the human visual system in the left and right eye images which could severely strain the visual system, or even destroy the 3D illusion altogether."

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