3D character model creation from cel animation

When creating a cel animation, the animators often use 3D character models to add some effects on the character or to generate intermediate images between the keyframes. However, it is a troublesome and time-consuming task to create a 3D model. In this paper, we present an easy-to-use approach for creating a set of consistent 3D character models from the user-specified strokes on a 2D image sequence. The created consistent 3D models can be used in cel animation editing systems for adding shadowing effects, textures, etc. Moreover, since the vertices of the consistent 3D models have one-to-one correspondence among the frames, by using 3D morphing techniques, this approach can also be used to generate intermediate images between the key frames.