Two algorithms for volume-preserving approximations of surfaces of revolution

The paper deals with volume-preserving approximations of surfaces of revolution. The approximating surfaces are generated only by line segments and circular arcs of a constant radius r. Further, for r > 0, the approximating surfaces are visually C¹ surfaces. For r = 0, developable C⁰ surfaces are obtained (consisting of either congruent cylinders or frustums of cones of revolution). Two algorithms are discussed. The first algorithm preserves the volume enclosed by a surface of revolution and the planes of every two latitude circles; the approximating surface is, however, no longer a surface of revolution. The second algorithm applies an approximating surface of revolution; however, the volume preservation no longer holds globally.     

An Interpolant with Tension Defined over Triangles

A C ¹ interpolation scheme is described, which is defined over triangular grids. The interpolant is computed on the basis of curves with tension, which permit local control over the shape of the resulting surface.     

An iterative method for computing multivariate C piecewise polynomial interpolants

This paper describes a successive overrelaxation (SOR) method for computing a multivariate C¹ piecewise polynomial interpolant. Given a collection of points in R^m together with a triangulation of those points, the scheme described requires only the values of the function to be interpolated at the given points. The result is a C¹ interpolant whose restriction to each of the triangles in the triangulation is a polynomial of degree n.     

The hybrid quintic Bézier tetrahedron

The focus of this paper is the construction of a new tetrahedral patch, which allows an explicit representation but does not require a split of the domain tetrahedra. The patch will be represented as a rational convex combination of a quintic Bézier tetrahedron, where the four inner Bézier points are duplicated. It can be regarded as generalization of the hybrid cubic triangular Bézier patch. The patch is used to represent a C¹ trivariate scattered data interpolant to data sampled in a volume.     

Detection of loops and singularities of surface intersections

Two surface patches intersecting each other generally at a set of points (singularities), form open curves or closed loops. While open curves are easily located by following the boundary curves of the two patches, closed loops and singularities pose a robustness challenge since such points or loops can easily be missed by any subdivision or marching-based intersection algorithms, especially when the intersecting patches are flat and ill-positioned. This paper presents a topological method to detect the existence of closed loops or singularities when two flat surface patches intersect each other. The algorithm is based on an oriented distance function defined between two intersecting surfaces. The distance function is evaluated in a vector field to identify the existence of singular points of the distance function since these singular points indicate possible existence of closed intersection loops. The algorithm detects the existence rather than the absence of closed loops and singularities. This algorithm requires general C² parametric surfaces.     

An adaptive method for smooth surface approximation to scattered 3D points

The construction of a surface from arbitrarily scattered data is an important problem in many applications. When there are a large number of data points, the surface representations generated by interpolation methods may be inefficient in both storage and computational requirements. This paper describes an adaptive method for smooth surface approximation from scattered 3D points. The approximating surface is represented by a piecewise cubic triangular Bézier surface possessing C¹ continuity. The method begins with a rough surface interpolating only boundary points and, in the successive steps, refines it by adding the maximum error point at a time among the remaining internal points until the desired approximation accuracy is reached. Our method is simple in concept and efficient in computational time, yet realizes efficient data reduction. Some experimental results are given to show that surface representations constructed by our method are compact and faithful to the original data points.     

High accuracy geometric Hermite interpolation

We describe a parametric cubic spline interpolation scheme for planar curves which is based on an idea of Sabin for the construction of C¹ bicubic parametric spline surfaces. The method is a natural generalization of [standard] Hermite interpolation. In addition to position and tangent, the curvature is prescribed at each knot. This ensures that the resulting interpolating piecewise cubic curve is twice continuously differentiable with respect to arclength and can be constructed locally. Moreover, under appropriate assumptions, the interpolant preserves convexity and is 6-th order accurate.     

Ray Tracing Triangular Bézier Patches

We present a new approach to finding ray–patch intersections with triangular Bernstein–Bézier patches of arbitrary degree. This paper extends and complements on the short presentation¹⁷ . Unlike a previous approach which was based on a combination of hierarchical subdivision and a Newton–like iteration scheme²¹ , this work adapts the concept of Bézier clipping to the triangular domain.
The problem of reporting wrong intersections, inherent to the original Bézier clipping algorithm¹⁴ , is inves-tigated and opposed to the triangular case. It turns out that reporting wrong hits is very improbable, even close to impossible, in the triangular set–up. A combination of Bézier clipping and a simple hierarchy of nested bounding volumes offers a reliable and accurate solution to the problem of ray tracing triangular Bézier patches.     

Cardinal interpolation: A bivariate polynomial example

The general interpolation problem over a linear space is solved by providing explicit formulas for the cardinal basis of the space. As an example of this technique, the cardinal form of a bivariate degree-nine polynomial interpolating to function and derivative values through order four at various points on a triangle is derived. The piecewise polynomial interpolant over an arbitrary triangulated domain in has C² continuity.     

Tetrahedra Based Adaptive Polygonization of Implicit Surface Patches

This paper presents a tetrahedra based adaptive polygonization technique for tessellating implicit surface patches. An implicit surface patch is defined as an implicit surface bounded by its intersections with a set of clipping surfaces and which lies within an enclosing tetrahedron. To obtain the polygonization of an implicit surface patch, the tetrahedron containing the patch is adaptively subdivided into smaller tetrahedra according to the criteria introduced in the paper. The result is a set of tetrahedra each containing a facet approximating the surface. The intersections between the facets and the clipping surfaces are used to locate the surface patch boundary. Ambiguous results in generating the facets for highly curved surfaces or surfaces with singular points are also addressed. The result of the polygonization is a set of triangular facets that can be used for visualization and numerical analysis. The proposed method is also suitable for locating the intersection of two implicit surfaces.     

Gregory-type patches bounded by low degree intergral curves for G continuity

G² continuity of free-form surfaces is sometimes very important in engineering applications. The conditions for G² continuity to connect two Bézier patches were studied and methods have been developed to ensure it. However, they have some restrictions on the shapes of patches of the Bézierpatch formulation. Gregory patch is a kind of free-form surface patch which is extended from Bézier patch so that four first derivatives on its boundary curves can be specified without restrictions of the compatibility condition. Several types of Gregory patches have been developed for intergral, rational, and NURBS boundary curves. In this paper, we propose some intergral boundary Gregorytype patches bounded by cubic and quartic curves for G² continuity.     

Generating Symbolic Interpolants for Scattered Data with Normal Vectors

Algorithms to generate a triangular or a quadrilateral interpolant with G1-continuity are given in this paper for arbitrary scattered data with associated normal vectors over a prescribed triangular or quadrilateral decomposition. The interpolants are constructed with a general method to generate surfaces from moving Bezier curves under geometric constraints. With the algorithm, we may obtain interpolants in complete symbolic parametric forms, leading to a fast computation of the interpolant. A dynamic interpolation solid modelling software package DISM is implemented based on the algorithm which can be used to generate and manipulate solid objects in an interactive way.     

Constructing triangular patch by basic approximation operator plus additional interpolation operator

~~Constructing triangular patch by basic approximation operator plus additional interpolation operator1. Barahill, R. E., Birkhoff, G., Gordon, W. J., Smooth interpolation in triangles, J. Approx. Theory, 1973, 8: 114-128. 2. Gregory, J. A., Smooth interpolation without twist constraints, in Computer Aided Geometric Design (eds. Barn-hill, R. E., Riesenfeld, R. R), New York: Academic Press, 1974, 71-88. 3. Charrot, P., Gregory, J. A., A pentagonal surface patch for comput…     

On approximating contours of the piecewise trilinear interpolantusing triangular rational quadratic Bezier patches

Given a three dimensional (3D) array of function values F_i,j,k on a rectilinear grid, the marching cubes (MC) method is the most common technique used for computing a surface triangulation T approximating a contour (isosurface) F(x, y, z)=T. We describe the construction of a C⁰ continuous surface consisting of rational quadratic surface patches interpolating the triangles in T. We determine the Bezier control points of a single rational quadratic surface patch based on the coordinates of the vertices of the underlying triangle and the gradients and Hessians associated with the vertices     

Hermite interpolation by triangular cubic patches with small Willmore energy

In this paper, a construction of a cubic Bézier spline surface that interpolates prescribed spatial points and the corresponding normal directions of tangent planes is proposed. Boundary curves of each triangular patch minimize the approximated strain energy. A comparison of optimal boundary curves is given. The interpolant minimizes Willmore energy functional. Some numerical examples and applications of the interpolation scheme are presented: surface approximation, hole filling and condensation of parameters.     

三角域上生成三角多项式曲面的实用方法

提出一种三角域上带三个形状参数的三角多项式基函数,基于此基函数可以生成一种三角域上的三角多项式曲面。该曲面可以构建边界为椭圆弧、抛物线弧以及圆弧的曲面。在不改变控制网格的情况下,所提出的曲面可以使用形状参数对曲面进行可预测的灵活调整。为了能够高效稳定地计算该三角多项式曲面,提出一种实用的de Casteljau-type算法。此外,还给出了连接两个三角多项式曲面的[G1]连续条件。     

Polynomial surfaces interpolating arbitrary triangulations

Triangular Bezier patches are an important tool for defining smooth surfaces over arbitrary triangular meshes. The previously introduced 4-split method interpolates the vertices of a 2-manifold triangle mesh by a set of tangent plane continuous triangular Bezier patches of degree five. The resulting surface has an explicit closed form representation and is defined locally. In this paper, we introduce a new method for visually smooth interpolation of arbitrary triangle meshes based on a regular 4-split of the domain triangles. Ensuring tangent plane continuity of the surface is not enough for producing an overall fair shape. Interpolation of irregular control-polygons, be that in 1D or in 2D, often yields unwanted undulations. Note that this undulation problem is not particular to parametric interpolation, but also occurs with interpolatory subdivision surfaces. Our new method avoids unwanted undulations by relaxing the constraint of the first derivatives at the input mesh vertices: The tangent directions of the boundary curves at the mesh vertices are now completely free. Irregular triangulations can be handled much better in the sense that unwanted undulations due to flat triangles in the mesh are now avoided.     

A Progressive Radiosity Algorithm for Scenes Containing Curved Surfaces

Based on the theory of light energy transfer between two differential diffuse surface areas, a generalized radiosity approach is presented. Unlike the conventional radiosity method, curved surfaces are subdivided into triangular surface patches, radiosity is assummed to be vary across each triangular surface patch. By adopting linear interpolation scheme over each triangular surface patch, we have established a complete set of approximated radiosity equations. Their unknowns are radiosities of differential surface areas located at all vertices of surface patches. The generalized radiosity equation has also been extended to non-diffuse environments. Theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate the great potential of this method,