Interactive 3D animation system based on touch interface and efficient creation tools

Recently importance of tablet devices with touch interface increases significantly, because they attract not only mobile phone users, but also people of all generations including small kids to elderly people. One key technology on those devices is 3D graphics; some of them exceed the ability of desktop PCs. Although currently 3D graphics are only used for game applications, it also has a great potential for other purposes. For example, an interactive 3D animation system for tablet devices has been developed recently and attracts many people. With the system, multiple 3D animations are played depending on view direction and user's gesture input. However, the system still has two critical issues: the first one is a complicated process for data creation, and the other is a conflict on several gestures overlapped at the same position. In the paper, the first issue is solved by using a realtime range sensor and the second one is solved by considering the relationship between the 3D object and the input 2D gesture. The effectiveness of the system was proved by making the real system and creating and manipulating the actual 3D animations.