Automatic object layout using 2D constraints and semantics

grantor: University of TorontoObject layout is a time consuming part of modeling. Previous efforts to simplify the task for users have focused upon reducing the number of degrees of freedom (DOF) that users are exposed to, using six DOF input devices, or using pseudo physics. Despite these efforts, modeling large, complex scenes remains difficult because users must still manually lay out the objects in a scene one at a time. This thesis describes a system which makes more feasible the modeling of large, complex scenes. A set of intuitive placement constraints is developed to automatically place large numbers of objects. In addition, semantic information is attached to objects. The semantic information allows automatic generation of placement constraints, resulting in two important capabilities. First, we can automatically populate a scene with hundreds of objects. Second, we can automatically generate default object manipulation options. This will allow an existing scene to be quickly manipulated by automatically redistributing objects to various semantically acceptable locations in the scene. Using the techniques developed, we show that the generation and placement of a complex scene involving 300 objects can be placed in less than 10 minutes.M.Sc