Proxy Painting: Digital Colorization of Real-world Objects

Proxy painting
Proxy painting enables artists to paint onto a proxy object in a permanent (real paint) or nonpermanent (digital paint) way. The painting is projected onto the original unmodified target object using projection mapping.

For archaeologists, it is often desirable to present statues in their original material and coloration. With projection mapping, real-world surfaces are augmented by digital content to create compelling alterations of the scene’s visual appearance without actually altering or even damaging the object. While there are frequent advances in projection quality, content creation is still a challenging and often unintuitive task, especially for non-experts. In our system, we combine the advantages of digital content creation, such as rapid prototyping, with the convenience of an analog workflow. Users paint on smaller versions of the projection mapping target, employing real-world brushes and pencils, while the results are presented live on its large counterpart. We further demonstrate the integration of our system into a state-of-art game engine. By leveraging a powerful rendering and material workflow, we make creating compelling materials and lighting situations an intuitive experience.

 

The entire article by VANESSA LANGE, PHILIPP KURTH, BENJAMIN KEINERT, MARTIN BOSS, MARC STAMMINGER, and FRANK BAUER can be found on ACM Digital Library.