Digital cartoon and animation process
First Claim
1. An image rendering process, comprising:
- (a) obtaining an original image into an image channel; and
(b) scrubbing said image channel, to enhance lines which will appear as transitions at borders of a subject in said line art representation;
(c) scaling said image channel up in size, to render said lines more finely;
(d) creating an alpha channel from said image channel, to denote key content appearing in said original image;
(e) creating a monochrome channel from said image channel;
(f) applying levels filtering to said monochrome channel, to increase contrast of low and mid-range information and thereby obtain further visual definition of said lines;
(g) applying high-pass filtration to the monochrome channel, to filter out low frequency spatial information and thereby obtain further visual definition of said lines;
(h) increasing contrast in said monochrome channel, to obtain further visual definition of said lines;
(i) darkening said monochrome channel, to strengthen visual definition of said lines;
(j) converting said monochrome channel to final size;
(k) lining said monochrome channel, to produce consistent thin appearance of said lines; and
(l) removing noise from said monochrome channel, thereby rendering said image channel into a rotoscope channel and producing a line art representation of said original image.
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Abstract
A digital cartoon or animation creation process, alternately describable as digital rotoscoping. Images are obtained in digital format by set-up steps (32, 44), image capture steps (34-36 and 46), and image storage (38, 48). The rotoscoping process (10) includes an image to line art rendering sub-process (14) which optionally may be followed by a specialized line art rendering sub-process (16) or a coloring sub-process (18). The line art rendering sub-process (14) includes a series of filters, particularly including a high-pass filter (68) using a gaussian blur convolution matrix. The specialized rendering sub-process (16) has particular use for carrying image regions having particularized detail through into final images in a manner that such detail is not lost, and the coloring sub-process (18) permits creation of colorized final images.
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Citations
22 Claims
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1. An image rendering process, comprising:
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(a) obtaining an original image into an image channel; and (b) scrubbing said image channel, to enhance lines which will appear as transitions at borders of a subject in said line art representation; (c) scaling said image channel up in size, to render said lines more finely; (d) creating an alpha channel from said image channel, to denote key content appearing in said original image; (e) creating a monochrome channel from said image channel; (f) applying levels filtering to said monochrome channel, to increase contrast of low and mid-range information and thereby obtain further visual definition of said lines; (g) applying high-pass filtration to the monochrome channel, to filter out low frequency spatial information and thereby obtain further visual definition of said lines; (h) increasing contrast in said monochrome channel, to obtain further visual definition of said lines; (i) darkening said monochrome channel, to strengthen visual definition of said lines; (j) converting said monochrome channel to final size; (k) lining said monochrome channel, to produce consistent thin appearance of said lines; and (l) removing noise from said monochrome channel, thereby rendering said image channel into a rotoscope channel and producing a line art representation of said original image. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. An improved rotoscoping process of the type in which an original image is used to produce an image channel and also a rotoscope channel containing a line art representation of the original image, wherein the improvement comprises:
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(a) creating a monochrome face channel from said rotoscope channel; (b) creating an alpha channel from said image channel; (c) removing unwanted content from said rotoscope channel; (d) reviewing and cleaning up by an artist of said rotoscope channel; (e) isolating at least one key region in said face channel; (f) enhancing the contrast of said key regions in said face channel; (g) integrating said face channel into said rotoscope channel, based upon the state of pixels in said alpha channel; and (h) cleaning up by an artist of said rotoscope channel, to thereby render an enhanced line art representation of the original image. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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Specification