The Crayola Magic 3D Coloring Book with Augmented Reality is an innovative and interactive coloring experience for children. This coloring book merges the traditional fun of coloring with the excitement of technology. With the use of augmented reality, this coloring book brings the illustrations to life in three dimensions. Children can color the pages with crayons or markers as they would with a regular coloring book. Once they are finished, they can use the Crayola app on a compatible device to scan the page and watch as their creation transforms into a vibrant and animated 3D image. This augmented reality feature allows children to explore their colored creations from any angle, providing a truly immersive and interactive experience.
Provided by Disney Research
The color also has to be continuous, so no seams can be seen between the visible areas and the occluded areas or where disparate portions of the textures meet. Alicia Marie Tan for Mashable points out some other companies have enhanced traditional coloring book experiences with augmented reality, including Quiver, Crayola Color Alive and Paint My Cat.
This augmented reality feature allows children to explore their colored creations from any angle, providing a truly immersive and interactive experience. They can watch as their characters move, dance, and play in a virtual environment. They can even take pictures or record videos of their 3D creations to share with friends and family.
Researchers use augmented reality to turn coloring books into 3-D experience
A coloring book and a box of crayons may give kids an early opportunity for creative expression but, next to TV and video games, coloring can sometimes seem unexciting. A coloring book app devised by Disney Research, however, can cause characters to leap from the page in 3-D glory with the help of augmented reality.
A child colors a character, such as an elephant, on the book page normally, while a tablet or smartphone running the app monitors the drawing. Based on the child's coloring, the app fills in colors in real-time on an animated 3-D version of the elephant that is visible on the device's screen and integrated into the video.
The app keeps the core focus on the traditional activity of coloring while offering a magical digital overlay that enhances engagement.
In user testing - performed with adults rather than children in this early study - the researchers found that most users said the app increased their motivation to draw in coloring books and 80 percent said the app increased their feeling of connection to a character.
Researchers from Disney, ETH Zurich and the Swiss university EPFL presented the augmented reality app at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2015) in Fukuoka, Japan. Although the research work is just now being presented to scientific audiences, it has already gone through the tech transfer process, inspiring the commercial product called "Disney Color and Play" launched earlier this year by Disney Publishing Worldwide and Bendon.
This work fits into a larger initiative at Disney Research called Augmented Creativity, which focuses on using augmented reality to enhance creative play.
"Augmented reality holds unique and promising potential to bridge between real-world activities and digital experiences, allowing users to engage their imagination and boost their creativity," said Robert W. Sumner, a principal research scientist who leads the group on animation and interactive graphics at Disney Research. "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to present the scientific advances behind this technology," continued Sumner, "and are especially happy that it is available to consumers, thanks to our cooperation with Disney Publishing."
To create this new experience, the researchers first created animated 3-D virtual characters and then use custom software to generate 2-D line-art representations of the characters for a coloring book. The app, operating on a device with a camera viewing the user and the coloring book, automatically detects the character the user is coloring and displays the 3-D version.
As the child applies color to the 2-D drawing, the app applies the same color to the 3-D character - both to the areas visible in the 2-D drawing and to the remainder of the 3-D form not visible in the book. Because the coloring occurs in real-time, the illusion is created that the user is also coloring the occluded areas, with similar texturing of the color.
Determining how to apply color to the occluded areas was one of the tougher problems to solve, Sumner said. Simply mirroring the user's colored strokes doesn't work because the pattern of colors used for, say, a character's face will not be appropriate for the back of the character's head. The color also has to be continuous, so no seams can be seen between the visible areas and the occluded areas or where disparate portions of the textures meet.
Their approach was to create a "lookup map" for each character, which matches pixels in the occluded parts with corresponding pixels in the portion visible to the user. User testing showed that this method provides better results than "naïve" approaches such as mirroring. Most importantly, the lookup map method enables the coloring to be performed instantly.
Because paper books don't lie perfectly flat and can flex as a user colors, the team developed a deformable surface tracking method to monitor surface changes and to keep the virtual character displayed on the device screen correctly oriented with the book's page.
More information: Live Texturing of Augmented Reality Characters from Colored Drawings-Paper, www.disneyresearch.com/wp-cont … d-Drawings-Paper.pdf
Provided by Disney Research
Citation: Researchers use augmented reality to turn coloring books into 3-D experience (2015, October 2) retrieved 20 October 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2015-10-augmented-reality-d.html
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That’s the draw behind a new coloring book from researchers at Disney, ETH Zurich and the Swiss university EPFL, reports Kristin Hohenadel for Slate. "Disney Color and Play" takes two-dimensional drawings and crafts them into "three-dimensional" characters that appear to stand and even move when viewed through a tablet computer.
The Crayola Magic 3D Coloring Book with Augmented Reality not only engages children in a fun and creative activity, but it also helps develop their imagination, hand-eye coordination, and technological literacy. By blending the physical act of coloring with cutting-edge technology, this coloring book opens up a whole new world of possibilities for children to explore. Overall, the Crayola Magic 3D Coloring Book with Augmented Reality offers an innovative and exciting way for children to enjoy the timeless art of coloring. It combines the tactile experience of coloring with the interactivity of augmented reality, providing a unique and enriching activity for children of all ages..
Reviews for "Immerse Yourself in a World of Color with the Crayola Magic 3D Coloring Book and Augmented Reality"
1. Sophia - 2/5 - I was really excited to try out the Crayola Magic 3D coloring book with augmented reality, but I have to say, I was disappointed. The concept of bringing the coloring pages to life with augmented reality sounded amazing, but the execution wasn't great. The app was glitchy and took forever to load, and when it finally did, the 3D images were pixelated and didn't look realistic at all. Plus, the coloring book itself was of poor quality, with thin pages that easily tore. Overall, I thought this product was more of a gimmick than a worthwhile purchase.
2. Josh - 1/5 - This coloring book with augmented reality was a complete waste of money. The app was difficult to download and install, and once I finally got it working, it constantly crashed and froze my phone. The 3D images didn't even align properly with the coloring pages, making it hard to enjoy the augmented reality experience. Additionally, the coloring book had very limited pages, and it was overpriced for what it offered. I would not recommend this product to anyone.
3. Emily - 2/5 - The Crayola Magic 3D coloring book with augmented reality did not meet my expectations. The app was not user-friendly and took a long time to set up. When I finally got it to work, the 3D images were underwhelming and not very interactive. The coloring book itself was also lacking in creativity, with repetitive and uninspiring designs. Overall, I found this product to be more frustrating than fun, and would not purchase it again.
4. Sam - 2/5 - I was initially excited to try out the Crayola Magic 3D coloring book with augmented reality, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The app frequently crashed and was difficult to navigate, which took away from the overall experience. The 3D images were also not very impressive and did not add much to the coloring pages. Additionally, the coloring book had limited pages and did not provide enough variety for prolonged enjoyment. I was disappointed with this product and would not recommend it to others.