High-quality tactile paintings

Abstract

The aim of this work is to bring the cultural heritage of two-dimensional art closer to being accessible by blind and visually impaired people. We present a computer-assisted workflow for the creation of tactile representations of paintings, suitable to be used as a learning tool in the context of guided tours in museums or galleries. Starting from high-resolution images of original paintings, our process allows an artist to quickly design the desired form, and generate data suitable for rapid prototyping machines to produce the physical touch tools. Laser-cut layered depth diagrams convey not only the individual objects in the painting and their spatial layout, but also augment their depth relations. CNC-milled textured reliefs additionally render fine details like brush strokes and texture suitable for the sense of touch. Our methods mimic aspects of the visual sense, make sure that the haptic output is quite faithful to the original paintings, and do not require special manual abilities like sculpting skills.

From 2D to 2.5D i.e. from painting to tactile model

“…A number of methods for obtaining 3D models from perspective scenes are in literature, proving to be very effective for solving this issue (see for instance [19]). Most of them, and in particular the method provided in [8], can be successfully used to perform this task.…”

“…Most of them, and in particular the method provided in [8], can be successfully used to perform this task. Or, at most, combining the results obtained using [8] with the method described in [19] for creating layered depth diagrams, this kind of spatial reconstruction can be accomplished. As stated in the introduction, however, one of the aims of the present work is to describe the devised user-guided methodology for 2.5D model retrieval ab initio in order to help the reader in getting the complete sense of the method.…”

“…One of the most important methods aimed to build models visually resembling sculptors-made bas-relief from paintings is the one proposed by [19]. In this work the high resolution image of the painting to be translated into bas-relief is manually processed in order to (1) extract the painted subject's contours, (2) to identify semantically meaningful areas and (3) to assign appropriate height values to each area.…”

Tactile 3D Bas-relief from Single-point Perspective Paintings: A Computer Based Method

“…One of the most recent methods for creating tactile paintings is the one proposed by [22]. In such a work the high resolution image of the painting to be translated into bas-relief is manually processed in order to 1) Extract the painted subject's contours, 2) To identify semantically meaningful areas and 3) To assign appropriate height values to each area.…”

“…In such a work the high resolution image of the painting to be translated into bas-relief is manually processed in order to 1) Extract the painted subject's contours, 2) To identify semantically meaningful areas and 3) To assign appropriate height values to each area. One of the results consists of "a layered depth diagram made of a number of individual shapes cut out of flexible sheets of constant thickness, which are glued on top of each other to resemble a painting" [22]. This method is required to assign height relations for each area regardless to the information coming from scene perspective.…”