Solving difficult or ill-defined problems, such as designing a new artifact or
identifying new insights from big data sets, typically involves an exploration of alternatives.
Yet, current tools do not support alternatives well in creative and analytical work.
This area of research investigates user interfaces for interactive 3D systems,
where users can easily select and manipulate 3D content.
This research is part of the NSERC CREATE Program in Computational Approaches to Sensorimotor Transformations for the Control of Action.
This system builds on the work in the SESAME system and realizes novel
interaction
techniques for 3D manipulation with 2D input devices, such as a mouse or
multi-touch tabletop system. Slide includes new methods for 3D rotations,
as well as a new method for quickly disambiguating 3D positions in perspective
viewing. It also includes known methods for quick 3D navigation and 3D selection. Moreover, the system also supports common VR input devices such as
Nintendo WiiMotes and Balanceboards.
Recent results were submitted to the IEEE 3DUI Contest 2011. Among all contest
entries, this system featured the fastest completion times for the
virtual 3D puzzle, for both novices and experts.
In the same year,
we ported Slide onto MULTI,
used its multi-touch abilities,
and enabled 3D Manipulation, see this video.
This research is part of the NSERC CREATE Program in Computational Approaches to Sensorimotor Transformations for the Control of Action and also the GRAND (Graphics, Animation and New Media) Network of Centres of Excellence.
The most recent work identifies input devices, such as the air pen, which work well for 3D manipulation.
This research is part of the NSERC CREATE Program in Computational Approaches to Sensorimotor Transformations for the Control of Action and also the GRAND (Graphics, Animation and New Media) Network of Centres of Excellence.
This project investigates infrastructure that encourages collaborative
work on large display surfaces.
Within this project, we are working on 2D and 3D systems that are very
easy-to-use, but still retain the capability to analyze real-world problems
in collaboration with other users in the same room.
Towards this we are working on a collaborative platform, which allows multiple people
in the same location to seamlessly collaborate during a session, even
if the content is beyond arm's reach.
Lasers can be used as an interaction device for large display surfaces.
This project focusses on a new kind of laser-based input device, and is
one of the few technologies, which support multiple simultaneously active
users. Evaluations show that laser pointers can serve as effective input
devices for large screens. Another part of the research focussed on a
state-of-the art evaluation of the performance of various remote pointing devices.
Our multi-user laser pointer input technology provides a basis for
collaborative, shared display groupware (SDG) and computer supported
cooperative work (CSCW) applications. Beyond that we are currently
completing a new kind of collaborative hardware setup designed to
faciltiate collaborative work by teams of 2-10 people with interdisciplinary
backgrounds. Such a seamless collaborative system can be used in design
review scenarios, which leads to better end products.
The system is called MULTI (Multi-user laser table interface)
and provides several fully interactive table and wall surfaces.
MULTI's table surface is very large
compared to other multi-touch tabletop systems (60" diagonal).
The system supports multi-touch interaction via
fingerlings that contain LED's. To our knowledge, this makes MULTI one of
the, if not the largest, multi-touch tabletop system at its time.
Scanning of objects to produce 3D models is becoming more commonplace
as the required hardware is becoming more widely available.
This involves obtaining multiple scans of an object to create a complete 3D model.
In this project we investigate better user interfaces for selecting the next view
to scan from. The starting point is better visualizations of unscanned regions.
This project investigates a new conceptual design system. The main goal of
is to enable even naive users to quickly create and modify 3D content to
communicate design ideas. SESAME (Sketch, Extrude, Sculpt, and
Manipulate Easily) systems is based on
the solid modeling paradigm and requires only a 2D pointing device. User
studies have shown that naive users can quickly learn to use this system
to generate interesting content. A comparison of SESAME with sketching on
paper showed no significant differences in terms of creativity, but a
comparison with a user group familiar with standard CAD tools clearly
shows that SESAME encourages more creativity than current tools.
A demo version
of the SESAME system is also available.
Lego blocks are a simple way to create 3D shapes. The Virtual Lego system
introduces simple techniques to quickly create and manipulate
Lego models. User studies showed that users without any 3D experience
could quickly create 3D content with this system.
You can also download a demo version of
the Lego system. A user study of a haptics version of Lego has
yielded interesting results.
Real scenes and real photographic images exhibit a much larger dynamic
range than current technology provides for. This project investigated
how images with high dynamic range (HDR) can be acquired and how images with
high dynamic range can be displayed on current hardware. One result is a
system that can acquire HDR images at video rates. A collaborative
project led by UBC and with G. Ward and other researchers at McGill
and York University as well as several companies resulted in a new
HDR display system (colorcoded HDR images by G. Ward, left: input data,
middle: image of standard monitor, right: image of HDR display).
The technologies were being commercialized by the startup
Brightside Technologies.
Dolby recently acquired this company.
The creation of object models for computer graphics applications, such
as interior design or the generation of animations is a labor-intensive
process. Today's computer aided design (CAD) programs address the
problem of creating single geometric object models quite well. But
almost all users find common tasks, such as quickly furnishing a room,
hard to accomplish. 
Image-Based Rendering (IBR) uses images to create new images.
This new paradigm has demonstrated a lot of advantages over conventional
computer graphicsi methods. Based on a novel visibility method, we
created an IBR system that generates images of scenes with billions
of samples at real-time speeds (>20Hz).
Ultimately we investigated the trade-off between image quality and
rendering speed by taking the capabilities of the human visual system
into account.