Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have developed a machine learning tool that could potentially allow beginner and professional designers to create 3D virtual models of everything from customized household furniture to video game content.

Pix2pix3d allows anyone to create a realistic, 3D representation of a simple or rough 2D sketch, using generative artificial intelligence tools similar to those powering popular AI photo generation and editing applications.

Pix2pix3d has been trained on data sets including cars, cats and human faces, and the team is working to expand those capabilities. In the future, it could be used to design consumer products, like giving people the power to customize furniture for their homes. Both novice and professional designers could use it to customize items in virtual reality environments or video games, or to add effects to films.

Once pix2pix3d generates a 3D image, the user can modify it in real time by erasing and redrawing the original two-dimensional sketch.

Citation: Deng, K., Yang, G., Ramanan, D., & Zhu, J. (2023). 3D-aware Conditional Image Synthesis. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.08509

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