Finger Sculpting with Digital Clay

Digital Clay is a term that signifies a computercontrolled physical surface, capable of taking any of a wide variety of possible shapes in response to changes in a digital 3D model or changes in the pressure exerted upon it by bare hands. The physical properties of such a device impose design and user-interface constraints not encountered in traditional, tracker-based software for the manipulation of virtual models. This paper describes the interaction techniques we have developed to work with this future medium. In particular, we present our solution for tracking the user’s fingers using a local deformation of the surface, which we call a blister, that senses the tangential and normal displacements of the finger. We also present a solution for creating variable-height bosses and creases with the simple sweep of a finger. Since the Digital Clay hardware is not yet operational, we have have implemented a haptic simulation framework based on a PHANTOM device. Figure 1: Sculpting with real clay