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Generation of cartoon-style bas-reliefs from photographs

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Abstract

This paper describes a new algorithm that generates a cartoon-style bas-relief surface from photographs of general scenes. Most previous methods for bas-relief generation have focused on accurate restoration of input 3D models on a background plane. The generation of bas-reliefs with artistic effects has rarely been studied. Considering that non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) techniques are currently very popular and 3D printing technology is developing rapidly, extending NPR techniques to the generation of a bas-relief surface with artistic effects is natural and valuable. Furthermore, cartoon is a basic non-realistic and artistic style familiar to general users. From this motivation, our method focuses on generating a cartoon-style bas-relief surface. We use the lens blur function of Google Camera, which is a smartphone application, to obtain a photograph and its depth map as inputs. Using coherent line drawing and histogram-based quantization methods, we construct a depth map that contains the salient features of given input scenes in abstract form. Displacement mapping from the depth map onto a thin plane generates a cartoon-style bas-relief. Experimental results show that our method generates bas-relief surfaces that contain the characteristics of cartoons, such as coherent border lines and quantized layers.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2017R1D1A1B03036291).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea

    Seungchan Lee & Bong-Soo Sohn

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  1. Seungchan Lee
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  2. Bong-Soo Sohn
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Correspondence to Bong-Soo Sohn.

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Lee, S., Sohn, BS. Generation of cartoon-style bas-reliefs from photographs. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 28391–28407 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-5343-0

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