A topology-preserving optimization algorithm for polycube mapping

We present an effective optimization framework to compute polycube mapping. Composed of a set of small cubes, a polycube well approximates the geometry of the free-form model yet possesses great regularity; therefore, it can serve as a nice parametric domain for free-form shape modeling and analysis. Generally, the more cubes are used to construct the polycube, the better the shape can be approximated and parameterized with less distortion. However, corner points of a polycube domain are singularities of this parametric representation, so a polycube domain having too many corners is undesirable. We develop an iterative algorithm to seek for the optimal polycube domain and mapping, with the constraint on using a restricted number of cubes (therefore restricted number of corner points). We also use our polycube mapping framework to compute an optimal common polycube domain for multiple objects simultaneously for lowly distorted consistent parameterization.     

Polycube参数化自动构造

提出了Polycube参数化的自动构造技术.该算法首先对网格进行特征分解,然后用立方体组成的一些基本形体逼近分解得到的各部分网格区域,确定基本Polycube的顶点和边在区域上的对应顶点和路径,将各区域进一步分解为面片,从而在构造Polycube的同时完成对曲面的分片,最后再分片参数化并进行面片间的平滑,高效地实现了Polycube的自动参数化.该方法在很大程度上减少了Polycube构造过程中的人工干涉,使其能够在纹理映射等方面得到应用.     

Polycube splines

This paper proposes a new concept of polycube splines and develops novel modeling techniques for using the polycube splines in solid modeling and shape computing. Polycube splines are essentially a novel variant of manifold splines which are built upon the polycube map, serving as its parametric domain. Our rationale for defining spline surfaces over polycubes is that polycubes have rectangular structures everywhere over their domains, except a very small number of corner points. The boundary of polycubes can be naturally decomposed into a set of regular structures, which facilitate tensor-product surface definition, GPU-centric geometric computing, and image-based geometric processing. We develop algorithms to construct polycube maps, and show that the introduced polycube map naturally induces the affine structure with a finite number of extraordinary points. Besides its intrinsic rectangular structure, the polycube map may approximate any original scanned data-set with a very low geometric distortion, so our method for building polycube splines is both natural and necessary, as its parametric domain can mimic the geometry of modeled objects in a topologically correct and geometrically meaningful manner. We design a new data structure that facilitates the intuitive and rapid construction of polycube splines in this paper. We demonstrate the polycube splines with applications in surface reconstruction and shape computing.     

A divide-and-conquer approach for automatic polycube map construction

Polycube map is a global cross-surface parameterization technique, where the polycube shape can roughly approximate the geometry of modeled objects while retaining the same topology. The large variation of shape geometry and its complex topological type in real-world applications make it difficult to effectively construct a high-quality polycube that can serve as a good global parametric domain for a given object. In practice, existing polycube map construction algorithms typically require a large amount of user interaction for either pre-constructing the polycubes with great care or interactively specifying the geometric constraints to arrive at the user-satisfied maps. Hence, it is tedious and labor intensive to construct polycube maps for surfaces of complicated geometry and topology. This paper aims to develop an effective method to construct polycube maps for surfaces with complicated topology and geometry. Using our method, users can simply specify how close the target polycube mimics a given shape in a quantitative way. Our algorithm can both construct a similar polycube of high geometric fidelity and compute a high-quality polycube map in an automatic fashion. In addition, our method is theoretically guaranteed to output a one-to-one map. To demonstrate the efficacy of our method, we apply the automatically-constructed polycube maps in a number of computer graphics applications, such as seamless texture tiling, T-spline construction, and quadrilateral mesh generation.     

Feature-preserving T-mesh construction using skeleton-based polycubes

This paper presents a novel algorithm which uses skeleton-based polycube generation to construct feature-preserving T-meshes. From the skeleton of the input model, we first construct initial cubes in the interior. By projecting corners of interior cubes onto the surface and generating a new layer of boundary cubes, we split the entire interior domain into different cubic regions. With the splitting result, we perform octree subdivision to obtain T-spline control mesh or T-mesh. Surface features are classified into three groups: open curves, closed curves and singularity features. For features without introducing new singularities like open or closed curves, we preserve them by aligning to the parametric lines during subdivision, performing volumetric parameterization from frame field, or modifying the skeleton. For features introducing new singularities, we design templates to handle them. With a valid T-mesh, we calculate rational trivariate T-splines and extract Bézier elements for isogeometric analysis.     

Constructing hexahedral shell meshes via volumetric polycube maps

Shells are three-dimensional structures. One dimension, the thickness, is much smaller than the other two dimensions. Shell structures can be widely found in many real-world objects. This paper presents a method to construct a layered hexahedral mesh for shell objects. Given a closed 2-manifold and the user-specified thickness, we construct the shell space using the distance field and then parameterize the shell space to a polycube domain. The volume parameterization induces the hexahedral tessellation in the object shell space. As a result, the constructed mesh is an all-hexahedral mesh in which most of the vertices are regular, i.e., the valence is 6 for interior vertices and 5 for boundary vertices. The mesh also has a layered structure, so that all layers have exactly the same tessellation. We prove that our parameterization is guaranteed to be bijective. As a result, the constructed hexahedral mesh is free of degeneracy, such as self-intersection, flip-over, etc. We also show that the iso-parametric line (in the thickness dimension) is orthogonal to the other two iso-parametric lines. We apply our algorithm to numerous real-world models of various geometry and topology. The promising experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm. Although our main focus is to construct a hexahedral mesh by using volumetric polycube parameterization, the proposed framework is general that can be applied to other regular domains, such as cylinder and sphere, which is also demonstrated in the paper.     

Optimizing polycube domain construction for hexahedral remeshing

Polycube mapping can provide regular and global parametric representations for general solid models. Automatically constructing effective polycube domains, however, is challenging. We present an algorithm for polycube construction and volumetric parameterization. The algorithm has three steps: pre-deformation, polycube construction and optimization, and mapping computation. Compared with existing polycube mapping methods, our algorithm can robustly generate desirable polycube domain shape and low-distortion volumetric parameterization. It can be used for automatic high-quality hexahedral mesh generation.