via: Teddy: A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design (by Takeo Igarashi,a Java-Applet Drawing Program that takes the 2D images you draw and renders them in 3D. The commercial version can also be found here. Video there (32Mb).

The user draws several 2D freeform strokes interactively on the screen and the system automatically constructs plausible 3D polygonal surfaces. Our system supports several modeling operations, including the operation to construct a 3D polygonal surface from a 2D silhouette drawn by the user: it inflates the region surrounded by the silhouette making wide areas fat, and narrow areas thin. Teddy, our prototype system, is implemented as a JavaTM program, and the mesh construction is done in real-time on a standard PC.

Why do I blog this? even though it's a bit old (1999), it's quite relevant to some other projects today concerning simple 3D modeling of simple objects.