A Survey on Sketch Based Content Creation: from the Desktop to Virtual and Augmented Reality

Abstract

Sketching is one of the most natural ways for representing any object pictorially. It is however, challenging to convert sketches to 3D content that is suitable for various applications like movies, games and computer aided design. With the advent of more accessible Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, sketching can potentially become a more powerful yet easy-to-use modality for content creation. In this state-of-the-art report, we aim to present a comprehensive overview of techniques related to sketch based content creation, both on the desktop and in VR/AR. We discuss various basic concepts related to static and dynamic content creation using sketches. We provide a structured review of various aspects of content creation including model generation, coloring and texturing, and finally animation. We try to motivate the advantages that VR/AR based sketching techniques and systems can offer into making sketch based content creation a more accessible and powerful mode of expression. We also discuss and highlight various unsolved challenges that current sketch based techniques face with the goal of encouraging future research in the domain.