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TEDDY - a 2D sketch to 3D mesh generator (1999)
There have been some interesting and successful approaches to the idea of creating an easy method for translating 2D sketches into 3D models since the late 90s. The first time I saw something like this was at SIGGRAPH in the early 2000s. There was a presentation in 2002 by this brilliant computational graphics professor from the University of Tokyo—a Japanese guy named Takeo Igarashi—who had worked out a seamless way for a user to “puff up” a drawing into 3 dimensions. He called the java-based software “Teddy” and he really brought the house down. Here's a synopsis of the talk:
"Teddy: A 3D Drawing System": This system, a prototype Java program developed at the University of Tokyo, was described in a SIGGRAPH 2002 paper. It allowed users to create 3D polygonal surfaces from freeform 2D strokes, which would then be automatically "inflated" into 3D models. It was designed to be mastered by a novice in a few minutes.
Here is the original website from 1999: https://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/teddy/teddy.htm (you can still run the routine on a Windows based machine, and export models as .obj files. These in turn can be viewed and worked on in any 3D environment).
Scroll down to see the two examples I created today (20251025). The first is a simple sketch created in Teddy. The second is a 3D model (.obj) displayed in the Windows 3D viewer program.
Check out this youtube video of the history: https://mattatz.org/works/teddy/
The developer, Takeo Igarashi, developed a follow-up to the original Teddy called “Smooth Teddy” a few years later (2003): https://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/%7Etakeo/java/smoothteddy/index.html but I couldn’t get it to run at all.
Fast forward to the application of artificial intelligence to practically everything digital these days…
Have you run across the software “Meshy?” It takes a 2D graphic and creates a 3D model. The base version is free, but of course they’re trying to hook you for a whole boatload of services for $. Here is a quick example I did from a drawing created by a freshman back during the Pandemic (hence the mask). In the third image below (scroll down), the original student work is at the left under “new model.” The 3D models it generated from the 2D graphic are in the four-up to the right.
The link to Meshy is: https://www.meshy.ai/workspace
Here’s another application for you to explore: https://www.3daistudio.com/ImageTo3DGuide
Here’s a tutorial in Blender (a bit technical) that shows the process for translating an Adobe Ilustrator vector line drawing into a 3D object: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiZMDUC4fgw&t=74s
Here’s a link to an article in Medium about a 2D-3D software called Kaedim: https://medium.com/@kaedim/how-to-convert-a-sketch-into-a-3d-model-with-kaedim-7a7500e5d605
Let’s keep talking. I may not really understand what you are trying to do yet…
Cheers,
Dan
Dan Collins, MFA, PhD
Professor, Expanded Arts
Director, PRISM (Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling)
Senior Global Futures Scholar, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
Principal Investigator, Paradox Resolved & Telluride Wetlands Inventory
School of Art
Arizona State University (ASU)
Tempe, AZ 85287-1505 USA
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