Real-time haptic sculpting in virtual volume space

Abstract

Virtual sculpture is a modeling technique for computer graphics based on the notion of sculpting a solid material with tools. Currently, most interactive sculpture is mainly focused on vision-based sensory channel. With visual feedback alone virtual sculpture cannot simulate the realistic sculpting operations in the physical world. The sense of touch, in combination with our kinesthetic sense, is capable of adding a new modality to virtual sculpture, especially in presenting complex geometry & material properties. In this paper, we propose a virtual haptic sculpting (VHS) system in the volume space, which supports real-time melting, burning, stamping, painting, constructing and peeling interactions. Based on the constructive volume methodology, we have developed sculpting tools as volumes, with each properties and size, distribution for elements, and rules of the interaction between the volumetric data and the tools. The sculpting tools are controlled directly by the 6-DOF haptic input to simulate realistic sculpting operations, in applying the computed model and tool dynamics while interacting with the volume. Both synthetic volumetric data and medical scan volumes are experimented using the 6-DOF PHANToM Desktop haptic interface.