Ancient Web: Takeo Igarashi Kept the Java-Applet Era of 3D Drawing

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

What if a computer could turn a casually drawn outline into a three-dimensional object without asking you to learn professional modeling software first?

Visit Takeo Igarashi's academic homepage.

Takeo Igarashi, a computer science professor at the University of Tokyo, maintains a spare personal research index organized around projects, publications, illustrations and software. The remarkable part is not the present-day faculty information but the older projects still linked alongside modern work. Their dates reach back to the mid-1990s, when research demonstrations were often distributed through academic webpages, downloadable movies and Java applets.

His project archive says his goals include making 3D models, animations and useful objects easier to produce without extensive technical training. It documents an unusually long succession of interface experiments, from sketch recognition to fabrication.

Draw something, then watch the computer interpret it

The best-known example is Teddy, a sketch-based 3D modeling system listed as a 1999 SIGGRAPH research project and doctoral dissertation. Its entry points to a Java applet, reflecting an era when visitors could sometimes experiment directly inside the browser. An accompanying image and paper connect the work to the bigger research question: how much can a computer infer from a hand-drawn shape?

Before Teddy came Pegasus, a 1997 geometric drawing editor that attempted to interpret imprecise pen strokes as clean geometric forms. Its linked applet is explicitly labeled for Internet Explorer 4.0 only. That note alone makes the page a little software museum; a specific browser was once part of the experiment's equipment.

Other early entries include 1998 research on drawing paths for 3D walkthroughs, Flatland, a 1999 electronic whiteboard project at Xerox PARC, and speed-dependent automatic zooming developed at Microsoft Research in 1999. Later work explores clothing manipulation, 3D surfaces, virtual furniture and interactive robots. The publication list records the associated proceedings and collaborators.

The presence of a Java link does not mean the program will operate in a modern browser, and this article does not claim the historical applets were tested. The links are evidence of how experimental systems were once demonstrated.

The page gives a rare continuous record of an interface research career without hiding its earliest tools. It traces a question that remains relevant: can drawing on a computer feel less like issuing commands and more like making something?

Browse the original projects and their applet references.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.