Seamless reconstruction of part-based high-relief models from hand-drawn images

We present a new approach to reconstruction of high-relief surface models from hand-made drawings. Our method is tailored to an interactive modeling scenario where the input drawing can be separated into a set of semantically meaningful parts of which relative depth order is known beforehand. For this kind of input, our technique allows inflating individual components to have a semi-elliptical profile, positioning them to satisfy prescribed depth order, and providing their seamless interconnection. Compared to previous methods, our approach is the first that formulates this reconstruction process as a single non-linear optimization problem. Because its direct optimization is computationally challenging, we propose an approximate solution which delivers comparable results orders of magnitude faster enabling an interactive user workflow. We evaluate our approach on various hand-made drawings and demonstrate that it provides state-of-the-art quality in comparison with previous methods which require comparable user intervention.