An Interactive Virtual Environment for 3D Model Assembly With Video Immersion

Virtual Reality (VR) applications will become increasingly important as the need to link several locations in the product development process arises. This motivates research in advanced techniques for the visualization of remotely located participants within a computer-generated environment. This research ports an existing application, which allows the assembly of predefined objects, into a virtual environment (VE). A further extension allows the user’s hands to be filmed and superimposed onto the computer-generated VE. To create this effect, live video was combined with a projection display and the “blue-box” technique. This combination enabled the texture of the hands to be untied from the background without the effort of putting up blue walls. The image is sent over the network to a high-end graphics computer generating the VE. The knowledge gained in this research will be the basis for future work on distributed multi-user access to a shared VE.