Depth sculpturing for 2D paintings: A progressive depth map completion framework

•The depth information of 2D paintings can only be generated by users.•Inspired by sculpturing, we address the problem as an iterative process.•We expect this work can inspire more applications of 2D painting plus depth.

In real word, the depth of objects can be directly acquired by existing depth cameras; however, the depth information of 2D paintings can only be generated by users. A novel and low complexity interactive depth generation approach for 2D paintings is devised. In contrast to traditional approaches which addressed this problem through a time-consuming optimization framework, we formulate the problem as a filter-based scheme to achieve reasonable interactive response time. Inspired by sculpturing, we address the depth information generation as an iterative stroking-and-viewing process. Our work achieves instant response for interactive generating of depth information in which immediate visualization of the generated depth information is possible. Users can, therefore, rapidly and directly rectify the current depth generation results. Finally, we illustrate that the newly added depth information for 2D paintings can not only be applied to view 3D effects but also support interesting applications like editing, enhancing, and user-controlled animating of 2D paintings.