Communications of the ACM
Disney Research Leads Development of Tool to Design Inflatable Characters and Structures
The researchers' system proposes a set of panels to achieve the desired shape of an inflatable design.
Credit: Disney Research
Researchers at Columbia University, ETH Zurich, and Disney say they have developed an interactive computational tool that enables even non-experts to create intricate inflatable structures. The method reverse-engineers the physics of inflation as a designer sketches a shape of a structure and the placement of seams. The process results in a system that generates patterns for a set of flat panels that, when sealed together and inflated, assumes the desired shape.
Previously, this task has been "extremely challenging since the designer must anticipate, and invert, the effects of pressure on the shape of the structure, while simultaneously taking into account the aesthetics of the seams," notes ETH Zurich's Melina Skouras.
After the designer submits a 3-D representation of the desired shape, the system proposes a set of panels to achieve that shape. The designer then can evaluate and move seams as necessary to improve the look or enhance the shape of the structure. In addition, the researchers say the system has an intuitive interface that enables non-expert users to efficiently add, edit, and replace seams and explore how the changes affect the final shape. The researchers' work is being presented this week at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 conference in Vancouver, Canada.
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