June 19, 2006
Popup Project (= Fotowoosh) - 3D Images from 2D photos (with Google Earth potential...)
Stephen Downes has just posted a link to this demo of how "Google Maps has added the ability to overlay information files created in the Google Earth format", which is something I'm going to have to try out.... But it also reminds me about the Popup project I came across the other other day which I haven't had a chance to explore yet, but the idea of which got me really excited...
The Popup Project, created by Derek Hoiem (et al. (?)) at CMU, automatically constructs simple "pop-up" 3D models, like those one would find in a children's book, out of a single outdoor image (i.e. a photograph). (There's a write-up from last year's ACM Sigraph about it here.) The 3D model is provided as a VRML file.
[UPDATE (16/4/07): it looks like pop-up is at the heart of a new online service, fotowoosh, that will take your photos and create 3D VRML models from them.]
As I stumbled across this just before a dog walk, it was natural for me to idle awhile on the popup project as we went trudging through the woods (the bluebells have all gone now:-( And the idea that fired me up was how neat it would be if you could take an outdoor photograph, run it through the popup engine, generate a VRML file and somehow import this into Google Earth.
Now I know from Google's acquisition last year (?) of Sketchup ("a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas") that it's possible to create 3D designs and import them into Google Earth. But I don't think I've ever seen mention of a VRML import option into that environment, which could be a problem...
Anyway, I did a bit of digging and turned up one interesting looking possibility: The Google SketchUp model was created by translating the CIS/2 file to VRML. The VRML was converted to DXF with Deep Exploration and then imported to Google Sketchup.
Ah - so maybe there is a way.. Can you imagine just imagine it - taking an outdoor photo of a building, chug chug clunk clunk computing with it for a bit, and then importing it as a 3D model into Google Earth ;-) (Yes,yes, I know it wont be that simple, and the conversion routines probably won't respect each other properly, but can you imagine it?:-)
I wonder too if any of the online gaming environments like Second Life can import VRML files directly...;-)
PS Deep Exploration has a 30 day free trial/download offer, and I've managed to get hold of a Matlab runtime environment so I can run the Popup code, so maybe if I get a spare day or two (to allow for problem time!) I'll try and get the packages running together and have a play...
Posted by ajh59 at June 19, 2006 10:30 PM