Reconstruction of machine-made shapes from bitmap sketches

We propose a method of reconstructing 3D machine-made shapes from bitmap sketches by separating an input image into individual patches and jointly optimizing their geometry. We rely on two main observations: (1) human observers interpret sketches of man-made shapes as a collection of simple geometric primitives, and (2) sketch strokes often indicate occlusion contours or sharp ridges between those primitives. Using these main observations we design a system that takes a single bitmap image of a shape, estimates image depth and segmentation into primitives with neural networks, then fits primitives to the predicted depth while determining occlusion contours and aligning intersections with the input drawing via optimization. Unlike previous work, our approach does not require additional input, annotation, or templates, and does not require retraining for a new category of man-made shapes. Our method produces triangular meshes that display sharp geometric features and are suitable for downstream applications, such as editing, rendering, and shading

Keypoint-driven line drawing vectorization via polyvector flow

Line drawing vectorization is a daily task in graphic design, computer animation, and engineering, necessary to convert raster images to a set of curves for editing and geometry processing. Despite recent progress in the area, automatic vectorization tools often produce spurious branches or incorrect connectivity around curve junctions; or smooth out sharp corners. These issues detract from the use of such vectorization tools, both from an aesthetic viewpoint and for feasibility of downstream applications (e.g., automatic coloring or inbetweening). We address these problems by introducing a novel line drawing vectorization algorithm that splits the task into three components: (1) finding keypoints, i.e., curve endpoints, junctions, and sharp corners; (2) extracting drawing topology, i.e., finding connections between keypoints; and (3) computing the geometry of those connections. We compute the optimal geometry of the connecting curves via a novel geometric flow — PolyVector Flow — that aligns the curves to the drawing, disambiguating directions around Y-, X-, and T-junctions. We show that our system robustly infers both the geometry and topology of detailed complex drawings. We validate our system both quantitatively and qualitatively, demonstrating that our method visually outperforms previous work