We demonstrate a diminished reality solution that can handle large 3D objects such as furniture; it works in real time, adapts to lighting. All in all it is a complete solution for handling indoor diminished reality needed in interior design applications.

1. [DEMO] A Complete Interior Design Solution with Diminished Reality
ȗsanni.siltanen@vtt.fiǡhenrikki.sarapaa@vividworks.com,
jari.karvonen@vividworks.com
Sanni Siltanen* Henrikki Saraspää* Jari Karvonen*
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Vivid Works Ltd Vivid Works Ltd
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate an interior design solution with advanced
features, most importantly, a diminished reality feature. The
diminished reality functionality takes 3D indoor structures into
account and adapts to the lighting of the environment. We present
two demonstrations on tablet and laptop. The iPad version utilizes
touch screen for selecting removed objects from the image. It
allows users to build modular furniture and it casts shadows of the
virtual furniture for realistic visualization result. On laptop PC we
demonstrate real time diminished reality for indoor AR with
several options.Ourdemonstrationsareoptimizedforinterior
designandindoorAR.
Keywords: Augmented reality, AR, diminished reality, indoor
AR, interior design, object removal, illumination adaptation, real-time,
user interaction, tablet PC, iPad, touch screen.
IndexTerms: H.5 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]—
Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities;
1 INTRODUCTION
Diminished reality is area of augmented and mixed reality where
something real is removed virtually from the images. Diminished
reality is needed for example in augmented reality interior design,
when people want to virtually test new furniture, and the existing
furniture is still in place. Diminished reality can also be used for
occlusion handling; if a foreground object is unimportant, and
something needs to be augmented behind it, it can be removed
virtually (Figure 4).
Researchers have presented several solutions for diminished
reality [1, 2, 3, 4]. Some of them need background information [1]
or assume the object to be planar or nearly planar [2]. Some
utilize 3D structure information [3] and some adapt to lighting
changes [4]. Most methods work great when the inpainted area is
small, but have problems when it grows.
In interior design, the system does not have any information of the
background texture, but may utilize 3D information of walls and
floor. The environment may have large variations and changes in
illumination and the diminished object may be large.
We demonstrate a diminished reality solution that can handle
large 3D objects such as furniture; it works in real time, adapts to
lighting. All in all it is a complete solution for handling indoor
diminished reality needed in interior design applications. Our
demonstration utilizes method developed at VTT in cooperation
with Vivid Works Ltd [5].
2 TABLET PC (IPAD)
The iPad version utilizes touch screen interface for selecting
objects to be removed from the picture. The pictures can be taken
either with or without the marker while maintaining the correct
perspective for augmenting the furniture in the picture. The iPad
version also allows user to build modular furniture and try out the
available color and fabric options. Also pricing related
information and product measurements are dynamically calculated
while the user makes changes to the configuration. To increase
realism in visualization the application uses multiple effects (such
as shadows, antialiasing and color correction) to achieve best
possible augmentation result.
.
Figure 1: With the iPad application the user can take a set of still
images and the plan the augmentation with time.
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IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2014
Science and Technology Proceedings
10 - 12 September 2014, Munich, Germany
978-1-4799-6184-9/13/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

2. The tablet version is built on top of VividPlatform Cloud service.
The 3D content, product related rules and configuration are
located on the server side which makes the application easily
maintainable and gives a flexibility to connect the application to
any backend service, ERP or web-shop. Moreover, the diminished
calculations are executed on the server
3 REAL-TIME DEMONSTRATION ON LAPTOP PC
We present a real-time method for AR interior design. In the
initialization phase, user selects the area to be diminished (Figure
2, a). Then the area is diminished on real time (Figure 2, b), and
augmentation is made (Figure 2, c). Even large areas can be
diminished seamlessly thanks to lighting adaptation (Figures 2b
and 4).
a)
b)
Figure 2: a) In the initialization phase, user can select diminished
area (blue polygon) and indicate edge between floor-wall
(green-line). b) Thereafter, the area is diminished in real time,
and c) virtual furniture can be augmented.
We also demonstrate diminishing using a volume. In real
application the diminished volume can be defined e.g. with depth
cameras. Our demonstration is independent of the way it is
produced. For simplicity we use a rectangular volume (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Diminished area defined by a volume.
We will bring a dollhouse room with furniture for the ISMAR
demonstration session, so the visitors can play with it (see Figures
2 and 3).
Figure 4: Diminished reality can also be used to remove unwanted
objects from foreground. Irregular wall decoration texture is
nicely imitated in inpainting texture.
4 SUMMARY
We present a complete augmented reality interior design solution
on iPad and real time demonstration of diminished reality on
laptop.
REFERENCES
[1] ZhuwenLi,YuxiWang,JiamingGuo,Loong-FahCheong,Steven
ZhiyingZhou,Diminishedrealityusingappearanceand3D
geometryofinternetphotocollections,ISMAR2013,pp.11-19
[2] NorihikoKawai,MasayoshiYamasaki,TomokazuSato,and
NaokazuYokoya.ARmarkerhidingbasedonimageinpainting
andreflectionofilluminationchanges.ISMAR2012.pp.293-294.
[3] Kawai,N.;Sato,T.;Yokoya,N.,Diminishedrealityconsidering
backgroundstructures,ISMAR2013,pp.259,260
[4] Herling,J.;Broll,W.,PixMix:real-timeapproachtohigh-quality
DiminishedReality,ISMAR2012,pp.141-150
[5] Siltanen,Sanni“DiminishedandMediatedRealityforAugmented
RealityInteriorDesign”,Titlesubjecttochanges,tobepublished.
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