Virtual Clay Prototyping System-A Framework for Real-Time Modeling

To provide a real-time force-feedback immersivevirtual modelling environment, powerful computingcapabilities are often needed. As this potentially results in acalculation bottleneck, virtual modelling scenes are oftendelayed and result in a poor user experience. In this paper,the authors present a novel approach to improve thecalculation speed for the volume pixel (voxel) amount offorce feedback generated based on the amount of pressureexerted on the 'virtual material' per unit time. Results fromthe experiments reveal that this approach required lesscomputing power, thereby offering a better user experience.This has been confirmed through a series of trials thatinvestigated the amount of time students spent duringsketching, physical modelling, and virtual prototyping.Results found that the remapped virtual prototypingmethod was more effective than the physical model inproductivity in terms of time as well as efficiency in terms ofdata conversion.