Free-form geometric modeling by integrating parametric and implicit PDEs

Parametric PDE techniques, which use partial differential equations (PDEs) defined over a 2D or 3D parametric domain to model graphical objects and processes, can unify geometric attributes and functional constraints of the models. PDEs can also model implicit shapes defined by level sets of scalar intensity fields. In this paper, we present an approach that integrates parametric and implicit trivariate PDEs to define geometric solid models containing both geometric information and intensity distribution subject to flexible boundary conditions. The integrated formulation of second-order or fourth-order elliptic PDEs permits designers to manipulate PDE objects of complex geometry and/or arbitrary topology through direct sculpting and free-form modeling. We developed a PDE-based geometric modeling system for shape design and manipulation of PDE objects. The integration of implicit PDEs with parametric geometry offers more general and arbitrary shape blending and free-form modeling for objects with intensity attributes than pure geometric models     

Haptics-based dynamic implicit solid modeling

We systematically present a novel, interactive solid modeling framework, haptics-based dynamic implicit solid modeling, which is founded upon volumetric implicit functions and powerful physics-based modeling. In particular, we augment our modeling framework with a haptic mechanism in order to take advantage of additional realism associated with a 3D haptic interface. Our dynamic implicit solids are semialgebraic sets of volumetric implicit functions and are governed by the principles of dynamics, hence responding to sculpting forces in a natural and predictable manner. In order to directly manipulate existing volumetric data sets as well as point clouds, we develop a hierarchical fitting algorithm to reconstruct and represent discrete data sets using our continuous implicit functions, which permit users to further design and edit those existing 3D models in real-time using a large variety of haptic and geometric toolkits, and visualize their interactive deformation at arbitrary resolution. The additional geometric and physical constraints afford more sophisticated control of the dynamic implicit solids. The versatility of our dynamic implicit modeling enables the user to easily modify both the geometry and the topology of modeled objects, while the inherent physical properties can offer an intuitive haptic interface for direct manipulation with force feedback.     

Dynamic PDE-based surface design using geometric and physical constraints

PDE surfaces, which are defined as solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs), offer many modeling advantages in surface blending, free-form surface modeling, and specifying surface’s aesthetic or functional requirements. Despite the earlier advances of PDE surfaces, previous PDE-based techniques exhibit certain difficulties such as lack of interactive sculpting capabilities and restrained topological structure of modeled objects. This paper presents an integrated approach that can incorporate PDE surfaces into the powerful physics-based modeling framework, to realize the full potential of PDE methodology. We have developed a prototype system that allows interactive design of flexible topological surfaces as PDE surfaces and displacements using generalized boundary conditions as well as a variety of geometric and physical constraints, hence supporting various interactive techniques beyond the conventional boundary control. The system offers a set of sculpting toolkits that allow users to interactively modify arbitrary points, curve spans, and/or regions of interest across the entire PDE surfaces and displacements in an intuitive and physically meaningful way. To achieve real-time performance, we employ several simple, yet efficient numerical techniques, including the finite-difference discretization, the multigrid-like subdivision, and the mass-spring approximation of elastic PDE surfaces and displacements. In addition, we present the standard bivariant B-spline finite element approximations of dynamic PDEs, which can subsequently be sculpted and deformed directly in real-time subject to the intrinsic PDE constraints. Our experiments demonstrate many attractive advantages of the physics-based PDE formulation such as intuitive control, real-time feedback, and usability to both professional and common users.     

Constructive sculpting of heterogeneous volumetric objects using trivariate B-splines

This paper deals with modeling heterogeneous volumetric objects as point sets with attributes using trivariate B-splines. In contrast to homogeneous volumes with uniform distribution of material and other properties, a heterogeneous volumetric object has a number of variable attributes assigned at each point. An attribute is a mathematical model of an object property of an arbitrary nature (material, photometric, physical, statistical, etc.). In our approach, the function representation (FRep) is used as the basic model for both object geometry and attributes represented independently using real-valued scalar functions of point coordinates. While FRep directly defines object geometry, for an attribute it specifies a space partition used to define the attribute function. We propose a volume sculpting scheme with multiresolution capability based on trivariate B-spline functions to define both object geometry and its attributes. A new trivariate B-spline primitive is proposed that can be used as a leaf in an FRep constructive tree. An interactive volume modeler based on trivariate B-splines and other simple primitives is described, with a real-time repolygonization of the surface during modeling. We illustrate that the space partition obtained in the modeling process can be applied to define attributes for the objects with an arbitrary geometry model such as BRep or homogeneous volume models.     

DigitalSculpture: a subdivision-based approach to interactive implicit surface modeling

This paper presents DigitalSculpture, an interactive sculpting framework founded upon iso-surfaces extracted from recursively subdivided, 3D irregular grids. Our unique implicit surface model arises from an interpolatory, volumetric subdivision scheme that is C¹ continuous across the domains defined by arbitrary 3D irregular grids. We assign scalar coefficients and color to each control vertex and allow these quantities to participate in the volumetric subdivision of irregular grids. In the subdivision limit, a virtual sculpture is obtained by extracting the zero-level from the volumetric, scalar field defined over the irregular grid. This novel shape geometry extends concepts from solid modeling, recursive subdivision, and implicit surfaces; facilitates many techniques for interactive sculpting; permits rapid, local evaluation of iso-surfaces; and affords level-of-detail control of the sculpted surfaces.     

Solid modelling based on sixth order partial differential equations

Although solid modelling based on partial differential equations (PDEs) has many advantages, such existing methods can either only deal with simple cases or incur expensive computational overheads. To overcome these shortcomings, in this paper we present an efficient PDE based approach to creating and manipulating solid models. With trivariate partial differential equations, the idea is to formulate an accurate closed form solution to the PDEs subject to various complex boundary constraints. The analytical nature of this solution ensures both high computational efficiency and modelling flexibility. In addition, we will also discuss how different geometric shapes can be produced by making use of controls incorporated in the PDEs and the boundary constraint equations, including the surface functions, tangents and curvature in the boundary constraints, the shape control parameters and the sculpting forces. Two examples are included to demonstrate the applications of the proposed approach and solutions.     

Constructive Hypervolume Modeling

This paper deals with modeling point sets with attributes. A point set in a geometric space of an arbitrary dimension is a geometric model of a real/abstract object or process under consideration. An attribute is a mathematical model of an object property of arbitrary nature (material, photometric, physical, statistical, etc.) defined at any point of the point set. We provide a brief survey of different modeling techniques related to point sets with attributes. It spans such different areas as solid modeling, heterogeneous objects modeling, scalar fields or “implicit surface” modeling and volume graphics. Then, on the basis of this survey we formulate requirements to a general model of hypervolumes (multidimensional point sets with multiple attributes). A general hypervolume model and its components such as objects, operations, and relations are introduced and discussed. A function representation (FRep) is used as the basic model for the point set geometry and attributes represented independently using real-valued scalar functions of several variables. Each function defining the geometry or an attribute is evaluated at the given point by a procedure traversing a constructive tree structure with primitives in the leaves and operations in the nodes of the tree. This reflects the constructive nature of the symmetric approach to modeling geometry and associated attributes in multidimensional space. To demonstrate a particular application of the proposed general model, we consider in detail the problem of texturing, introduce a model of constructive hypervolume texture, and then discuss its implementation, as well as the special modeling language we used for modeling hypervolume objects.     

Implicit Surface-Based Geometric Fusion

This paper introduces a general purpose algorithm for reliable integration of sets of surface measurements into a single 3D model. The new algorithm constructs a single continuous implicit surface representation which is the zero-set of a scalar field function. An explicit object model is obtained using any implicit surface polygonization algorithm. Object models are reconstructed from both multiple view conventional 2.5D range images and hand-held sensor range data. To our knowledge this is the first geometric fusion algorithm capable of reconstructing 3D object models from noisy hand-held sensor range data.This approach has several important advantages over existing techniques. The implicit surface representation allows reconstruction of unknown objects of arbitrary topology and geometry. A continuous implicit surface representation enables reliable reconstruction of complex geometry. Correct integration of overlapping surface measurements in the presence of noise is achieved using geometric constraints based on measurement uncertainty. The use of measurement uncertainty ensures that the algorithm is robust to significant levels of measurement noise. Previous implicit surface-based approaches use discrete representations resulting in unreliable reconstruction for regions of high curvature or thin surface sections. Direct representation of the implicit surface boundary ensures correct reconstruction of arbitrary topology object surfaces. Fusion of overlapping measurements is performed using operations in 3D space only. This avoids the local 2D projection required for many previous methods which results in limitations on the object surface geometry that is reliably reconstructed. All previous geometric fusion algorithms developed for conventional range sensor data are based on the 2.5D image structure preventing their use for hand-held sensor data. Performance evaluation of the new integration algorithm against existing techniques demonstrates improved reconstruction of complex geometry.     

Direct Manipulation and Interactive Sculpting of PDE Surfaces

This paper presents an integrated approach and a unified algorithm that combine the benefits of PDE surfaces and powerful physics-based modeling techniques within one single modeling framework, in order to realize the full potential of PDE surfaces. We have developed a novel system that allows direct manipulation and interactive sculpting of PDE surfaces at arbitrary location, hence supporting various interactive techniques beyond the conventional boundary control. Our prototype software affords users to interactively modify point, normal, curvature, and arbitrary region of PDE surfaces in a predictable way. We employ several simple, yet effective numerical techniques including the finite-difference discretization of the PDE surface, the multigrid-like subdivision on the PDE surface, the mass-spring approximation of the elastic PDE surface, etc. to achieve real-time performance. In addition, our dynamic PDE surfaces can also be approximated using standard bivariate B-spline finite elements, which can subsequently be sculpted and deformed directly in real-time subject to intrinsic PDE constraints. Our experiments demonstrate many attractive advantages of our dynamic PDE formulation such as intuitive control, real-time feedback, and usability to the general public.     

Fast character modeling with sketch-based PDE surfaces

Virtual characters are 3D geometric models of characters. They have a lot of applications in multimedia. In this paper, we propose a new physics-based deformation method and efficient character modelling framework for creation of detailed 3D virtual character models. Our proposed physics-based deformation method uses PDE surfaces. Here PDE is the abbreviation of Partial Differential Equation, and PDE surfaces are defined as sculpting force-driven shape representations of interpolation surfaces. Interpolation surfaces are obtained by interpolating key cross-section profile curves and the sculpting force-driven shape representation uses an analytical solution to a vector-valued partial differential equation involving sculpting forces to quickly obtain deformed shapes. Our proposed character modelling framework consists of global modeling and local modeling. The global modeling is also called model building, which is a process of creating a whole character model quickly with sketch-guided and template-based modeling techniques. The local modeling produces local details efficiently to improve the realism of the created character model with four shape manipulation techniques. The sketch-guided global modeling generates a character model from three different levels of sketched profile curves called primary, secondary and key cross-section curves in three orthographic views. The template-based global modeling obtains a new character model by deforming a template model to match the three different levels of profile curves. Four shape manipulation techniques for local modeling are investigated and integrated into the new modelling framework. They include: partial differential equation-based shape manipulation, generalized elliptic curve-driven shape manipulation, sketch assisted shape manipulation, and template-based shape manipulation. These new local modeling techniques have both global and local shape control functions and are efficient in local shape manipulation. The final character models are represented with a collection of surfaces, which are modeled with two types of geometric entities: generalized elliptic curves (GECs) and partial differential equation-based surfaces. Our experiments indicate that the proposed modeling approach can build detailed and realistic character models easily and quickly.

     

Touch-based haptics for interactive editing on point set surfaces

A modeling paradigm for haptics-based editing on point set surfaces exploits implicit surfaces, physics-based modeling, point-sampled surfaces, and haptic. We propose a point-based geometry representation that we initially designed for dynamic physics-based sculpting, but can easily generalize to other relevant applications such as data modeling and human-computer interaction. By extending the idea of the local reference domain in the moving least square (MLS) surface model to the construction of a local and global surface distance field, we naturally incorporate Hua and Qin's dynamic implicit volumetric model into our deformation of the point-based geometry, which not only facilitates topology change but also affords dynamic sculpting and deformation.     

Diffusion equations over arbitrary triangulated surfaces for filtering and texture applications

In computer graphics, triangular mesh representations of surfaces have become very popular. Compared with parametric and implicit forms of surfaces, triangular mesh surfaces have many advantages, such as easy to render, convenient to store and the ability to model geometric objects with arbitrary topology. In this paper, we are interested in data processing over triangular mesh surfaces through PDEs (partial differential equations). We study several diffusion equations over triangular mesh surfaces, and present corresponding numerical schemes to solve them. Our methods work for triangular mesh surfaces with arbitrary geometry (the angles of each triangle are arbitrary) and topology (open meshes or closed meshes of arbitrary genus). Besides the flexibility, our methods are efficient due to the implicit/semi-implicit time discretization. We finally apply our methods to several filtering and texture applications such as image processing, texture generating and regularization of harmonic maps over triangular mesh surfaces. The results demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of our methods.     

Two-dimensional Potential Fields for Advanced Implicit Modeling Operators

Current methods for building models using implicit volume techniques present problems defining accurate and controllable blend shapes between implicit primitives. We present new methods to extend the freedom and controllability of implicit volume modeling. The main idea is to use a free‐form curve to define the profile of the blend region between implicit primitives. The use of a free‐form implicit curve, controlled point‐by‐point in the Euclidean user space, allows us to group boolean composition operators with sharp transitions or smooth free‐form transitions in a single modeling metaphor. This idea is generalized for the creation, sculpting and manipulation of volume objects, while providing the user with simplicity, controllability and freedom in implicit modeling. ACM CSS: I.3.5 Computational Gemoetry and Object Modeling—Curve, surface, solid, and object representations     

3D object model reconstruction from image sequence based on photometric consistency in volume space

This paper presents a system that can reconstruct a photorealistic 3D object model from an image sequence captured at arbitrary viewpoints. The whole system consists of four steps: camera calibration, volumetric modeling, polygonal model formation and texture mapping. We adopt the shape-from-silhouette approach for volumetric modeling. There are two common types of object surface that are difficult to reconstruct—textureless surface and concave surface. To tackle the problems, we propose to perform the volumetric modeling based on the constraints of viewpoint proximity and photometric consistency in the volume space. The volumetric model is converted to the mesh model for efficient manipulation. Finally, the texture map is generated from the image sequence to give the 3D model a photorealistic appearance. Some reconstructed object models are presented to demonstrate the superior performance of our system as compared with the conventional modeling technique based on the photo-consistency in the image space.     

A constraint solver to define correctly dimensioned and overdimensioned parts

Creating mechanical parts through conceptual design implies the use of constraints. When developing conceptual design-based CAD programs, two independent modules must be created: on the one hand, the sketcher module, which must define the model's geometrical constraints and interpret the user's intention through a system of rules. On the other, the calculation module which must resolve the final geometry and eventually dimension the mechanical part. This paper presents a new approach to the constraint-based solvers. The proposed approach establishes the complete two-dimensional geometry and constraints of a sketch and relates it with the complete dimensioning of the sketch. The developed methodology gives as result a complete and consistent dimensioning of the sketch following the rules established by a standard like ISO, determining also if the system is over-constrained and detecting the redundant dimensions. The methodology establishes the most suitable dimensioning but, it is also possible to obtain other alternatives of full sets of dimensions.First, the geometric constraints considered are described, and the use of each one justified, together with the numerical methods used to resolve the set of non-linear constraints obtained. A procedure has also been developed for choosing the set of independent constraints of the system, by introducing the priority factor concept, which lets the overriding constraints in the system be decided, and then the algorithms developed for automatically assigning the constraints are presented. Also described are the criteria followed that lead to an automatic generation of dimensions, as well as to equivalent and alternative dimensioning. Finally, a series of examples are presented to show the possibilities of the developed methodology.     

Scalar-function-driven editing on point set surfaces

Three-dimensional acquisition is an increasingly popular means of creating surface models. As 3D digital photographic and scanning devices produce higher resolution images, acquired geometric data sets grow more complex in terms of the modeled objects' size, geometry, and topology. Point-based geometry is a form of 3D content acquisition popular in graphics and related visual computing areas. Point set surfaces are enjoying a renaissance in modeling and rendering, with many efforts focused on direct rendering techniques and effective modeling mechanisms. We've developed a scalar-field-driven editing paradigm and system for point set surfaces that let users manipulate and sculpt point clouds intuitively and efficiently. The paradigm is primarily based on the representation of versatile, embedded scalar fields associated with any region of the point set surface. After constructing the surface distance field from the point clouds, we incorporate the dynamic implicit volumetric model into the point-based geometry deformation. We've also integrated a haptics interface into our surface-modeling framework.     

Dynamic modeling of butterfly subdivision surfaces

The authors develop integrated techniques that unify physics based modeling with geometric subdivision methodology and present a scheme for dynamic manipulation of the smooth limit surface generated by the (modified) butterfly scheme using physics based “force” tools. This procedure based surface model obtained through butterfly subdivision does not have a closed form analytic formulation (unlike other well known spline based models), and hence poses challenging problems to incorporate mass and damping distributions, internal deformation energy, forces, and other physical quantities required to develop a physics based model. Our primary contributions to computer graphics and geometric modeling include: (1) a new hierarchical formulation for locally parameterizing the butterfly subdivision surface over its initial control polyhedron, (2) formulation of dynamic butterfly subdivision surface as a set of novel finite elements, and (3) approximation of this new type of finite elements by a collection of existing finite elements subject to implicit geometric constraints. Our new physics based model can be sculpted directly by applying synthesized forces and its equilibrium is characterized by the minimum of a deformation energy subject to the imposed constraints. We demonstrate that this novel dynamic framework not only provides a direct and natural means of manipulating geometric shapes, but also facilitates hierarchical shape and nonrigid motion estimation from large range and volumetric data sets using very few degrees of freedom (control vertices that define the initial polyhedron)     

Finite volume flow simulations on arbitrary domains

We present a novel method for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations that more accurately handles arbitrary boundary conditions and sharp geometric features in the fluid domain. It uses a space filling tetrahedral mesh, which can be created using many well-known methods, to represent the fluid domain. Examples of the method’s strengths are illustrated by free surface fluid simulations and smoke simulations of flows around objects with complex geometry.     

Towards object-oriented modelling of euclidean geometry

This paper presents an object-oriented approach to interactive modelling of geometric objects. The objects are specified by geometric constructions that are built by mimicing the compass-and-ruler manual approach in a direct manipulation graphical interface. The system adopts a programming-by-example paradigm to enrich construction methods incrementally. New constructions can be used to define new classes of objects or new methods for an existing class. Messages exchanged among objects specify geometric relationships among entities. Messages sent at construction time implicitly form a relationship network, which is preserved during subsequent geometric transformations, so that geometric constraints can be satisfied without resorting to numerical methods. The prototype GEObject is implemented under Actor in a Windows 3.0 environment.     

Surface area estimation of digitized 3D objects using quasi-Monte Carlo methods

A novel and efficient quasi-Monte Carlo method for estimating the surface area of digitized 3D objects in the volumetric representation is presented. It operates directly on the original digitized objects without any surface reconstruction procedure. Based on the Cauchy-Crofton formula from integral geometry, the method estimates the surface area of a volumetric object by counting the number of intersection points between the object's boundary surface and a set of uniformly distributed lines generated with low-discrepancy sequences. Using a clustering technique, we also propose an effective algorithm for computing the intersection of a line with the boundary surface of volumetric objects. A number of digitized objects are used to evaluate the performance of the new method for surface area measurement.