3DM: A Three Dimensional Modeler Using a Head_mounted Display

Blogs I commented on
Franck Norman
Drew Logsdon

The author's goal was to design a 3D modelling program that uses the same techniques from other programs, but presents it in a more intuitive manner for beginning users to use. The program uses a head mounted display, which places the user "in the modelling space" Placing an object in 3D requires 6 parameters. However, using a 2D mouse and a keyboard makes the spatial relationships unclear.

3DM uses a VPL eyephone to display the image and trackers to track the head and hand. The input device was a 6D 2 button mouse from UNC-CH. Image rendering was done by Pixel-Planes 4 and 5 high performance graphics engines. The user interface has a cursor and a toolbox. Some icons are tools, where the cursor will change based on what tool was selected and commands perform a single task. Toggles can change the global setting for 3DM. There is continuous feedback for the user through predictive highlighting.

3DM has multiple methods of creating surfaces, triangle creation tools and the extrusion tool, which draws a poly line or takes an existing one and stretch it out. There is another tool which allows for the creation of standard shapes, like boxes, spheres, and cylinders. Also, there are methods to edit the surface by grasping and moving the object, scaling, cut and paste, and there is an undo/redo button as well. The grouping feature allows the user to change one copy and have that change go to every other copy.

The results show that organic shapes are easily created in 3DM. Users feel in control because they can grasp something to change it. However, there are some weaknesses like keeping two shapes parallel.

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I think this paper was good for something written in 1992. I liked the way they allowed the user to get some feedback of their actions. However, their results was lacking the quantitative aspect. They didn't give any stats from the user study, like who was tested, and what they were told to do. They gave general analysis of their results. Nevertheless, I liked the research and I wonder how this would be improved with current technology. and i'm sure that this paper was referenced by another paper we read earlier.