Localized Delaunay Refinement for Volumes

Delaunay refinement, recognized as a versatile tool for meshing a variety of geometries, has the deficiency that it does not scale well with increasing mesh size. The bottleneck can be traced down to the memory usage of 3D Delaunay triangulations. Recently an approach has been suggested to tackle this problem for the specific case of smooth surfaces by subdividing the sample set in an octree and then refining each subset individually while ensuring termination and consistency. We extend this to localized refinement of volumes, which brings about some new challenges. We show how these challenges can be met with simple steps while retaining provable guarantees, and that our algorithm scales many folds better than a state‐of‐the‐art meshing tool provided by CGAL.     

Geodesic-Controlled Developable Surfaces for Modeling Paper Bending

We present a novel and effective method for modeling a developable surface to simulate paper bending in interactive and animation applications. The method exploits the representation of a developable surface as the envelope of rectifying planes of a curve in 3D, which is therefore necessarily a geodesic on the surface. We manipulate the geodesic to provide intuitive shape control for modeling paper bending. Our method ensures a natural continuous isometric deformation from a piece of bent paper to its flat state without any stretching. Test examples show that the new scheme is fast, accurate, and easy to use, thus providing an effective approach to interactive paper bending. We also show how to handle non-convex piecewise smooth developable surfaces.     

A Statistical Model of Human Pose and Body Shape

Generation and animation of realistic humans is an essential part of many projects in today's media industry. Especially, the games and special effects industry heavily depend on realistic human animation. In this work a unified model that describes both, human pose and body shape is introduced which allows us to accurately model muscle deformations not only as a function of pose but also dependent on the physique of the subject. Coupled with the model's ability to generate arbitrary human body shapes, it severely simplifies the generation of highly realistic character animations. A learning based approach is trained on approximately 550 full body 3D laser scans taken of 114 subjects. Scan registration is performed using a non-rigid deformation technique. Then, a rotation invariant encoding of the acquired exemplars permits the computation of a statistical model that simultaneously encodes pose and body shape. Finally, morphing or generating meshes according to several constraints simultaneously can be achieved by training semantically meaningful regressors.     

Context-Aware Skeletal Shape Deformation

We describe a system for the animation of a skeleton-controlled articulated object that preserves the fine geometric details of the object skin and conforms to the characteristic shapes of the object specified through a set of examples. The system provides the animator with an intuitive user interface and produces compelling results even when presented with a very small set of examples. In addition it is able to generalize well by extrapolating far beyond the examples.     

Range Scan Registration Using Reduced Deformable Models

We present an unsupervised method for registering range scans of deforming, articulated shapes. The key idea is to model the motion of the underlying object using a reduced deformable model. We use a linear skinning model for its simplicity and represent the weight functions on a regular grid localized to the surface geometry. This decouples the deformation model from the surface representation and allows us to deal with the severe occlusion and missing data that is inherent in range scan data. We formulate the registration problem using an objective function that enforces close alignment of the 3D data and includes an intuitive notion of joints. This leads to an optimization problem that we solve using an efficient EM-type algorithm. With our algorithm we obtain smooth deformations that accurately register pairs of range scans with significant motion and occlusion. The main advantages of our approach are that it does not require user specified markers, a template, nor manual segmentation of the surface geometry into rigid parts.     

A Condition Number for Non‐Rigid Shape Matching

Despite the large amount of work devoted in recent years to the problem of non‐rigid shape matching, practical methods that can successfully be used for arbitrary pairs of shapes remain elusive. In this paper, we study the hardness of the problem of shape matching, and introduce the notion of the shape condition number, which captures the intuition that some shapes are inherently more difficult to match against than others. In particular, we make a connection between the symmetry of a given shape and the stability of any method used to match it while optimizing a given distortion measure. We analyze two commonly used classes of methods in deformable shape matching, and show that the stability of both types of techniques can be captured by the appropriate notion of a condition number. We also provide a practical way to estimate the shape condition number and show how it can be used to guide the selection of landmark correspondences between shapes. Thus we shed some light on the reasons why general shape matching remains difficult and provide a way to detect and mitigate such difficulties in practice.     

Articulated Object Reconstruction and Markerless Motion Capture from Depth Video

We present an algorithm for acquiring the 3D surface geometry and motion of a dynamic piecewise‐rigid object using a single depth video camera. The algorithm identifies and tracks the rigid components in each frame, while accumulating the geometric information acquired over time, possibly from different viewpoints. The algorithm also reconstructs the dynamic skeleton of the object, thus can be used for markerless motion capture. The acquired model can then be animated to novel poses. We show the results of the algorithm applied to synthetic and real depth video.     

Conformal Flattening by Curvature Prescription and Metric Scaling

We present an efficient method to conformally parameterize 3D mesh data sets to the plane. The idea behind our method is to concentrate all the 3D curvature at a small number of select mesh vertices, called cone singularities, and then cut the mesh through those singular vertices to obtain disk topology. The singular vertices are chosen automatically. As opposed to most previous methods, our flattening process involves only the solution of linear systems of Poisson equations, thus is very efficient. Our method is shown to be faster than existing methods, yet generates parameterizations having comparable quasi‐conformal distortion.     

CHC++: Coherent Hierarchical Culling Revisited

We present a new algorithm for efficient occlusion culling using hardware occlusion queries. The algorithm significantly improves on previous techniques by making better use of temporal and spatial coherence of visibility. This is achieved by using adaptive visibility prediction and query batching. As a result of the new optimizations the number of issued occlusion queries and the number of rendering state changes are significantly reduced. We also propose a simple method for determining tighter bounding volumes for occlusion queries and a method which further reduces the pipeline stalls. The proposed method provides up to an order of magnitude speedup over the previous state of the art. The new technique is simple to implement, does not rely on hardware calibration and integrates well with modern game engines.     

Connectivity Editing for Quad‐Dominant Meshes

We propose a connectivity editing framework for quad‐dominant meshes. In our framework, the user can edit the mesh connectivity to control the location, type, and number of irregular vertices (with more or fewer than four neighbors) and irregular faces (non‐quads). We provide a theoretical analysis of the problem, discuss what edits are possible and impossible, and describe how to implement an editing framework that realizes all possible editing operations. In the results, we show example edits and illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of different strategies for quad‐dominant mesh design.     

Embedded Implicit Stand-Ins for Animated Meshes: A Case of Hybrid Modelling

In this paper, we address shape modelling problems, encountered in computer animation and computer games development that are difficult to solve just using polygonal meshes. Our approach is based on a hybrid-modelling concept that combines polygonal meshes with implicit surfaces. A hybrid model consists of an animated polygonal mesh and an approximation of this mesh by a convolution surface stand-in that is embedded within it or is attached to it. The motions of both objects are synchronised using a rigging skeleton. We model the interaction between an animated mesh object and a viscoelastic substance, which is normally represented in an implicit form. Our approach is aimed at achieving verisimilitude rather than physically based simulation. The adhesive behaviour of the viscous object is modelled using geometric blending operations on the corresponding implicit surfaces. Another application of this approach is the creation of metamorphosing implicit surface parts that are attached to an animated mesh. A prototype implementation of the proposed approach and several examples of modelling and animation with near real-time preview times are presented.     

Interactive Modeling of City Layouts using Layers of Procedural Content

In this paper, we present new solutions for the interactive modeling of city layouts that combine the power of procedural modeling with the flexibility of manual modeling. Procedural modeling enables us to quickly generate large city layouts, while manual modeling allows us to hand‐craft every aspect of a city. We introduce transformation and merging operators for both topology preserving and topology changing transformations based on graph cuts. In combination with a layering system, this allows intuitive manipulation of urban layouts using operations such as drag and drop, translation, rotation etc. In contrast to previous work, these operations always generate valid, i.e., intersection‐free layouts. Furthermore, we introduce anchored assignments to make sure that modifications are persistent even if the whole urban layout is regenerated.     

GPU Shape Grammars

GPU Shape Grammars provide a solution for interactive procedural generation, tuning and visualization of massive environment elements for both video games and production rendering. Our technique generates detailed models without explicit geometry storage. To this end we reformulate the grammar expansion for generation of detailed models at the tesselation control and geometry shader stages. Using the geometry generation capabilities of modern graphics hardware, our technique generated massive, highly detailed models. GPU Shape Grammars integrate within a scalable framework by introducing automatic generation of levels of detail at reduced cost. We apply our solution for interactive generation and rendering of scenes containing thousands of buildings and trees.     

GPU Rendering of Relief Mapped Conical Frusta

This paper proposes to use relief‐mapped conical frusta (cones cut by planes) to skin skeletal objects. Based on this representation, current programmable graphics hardware can perform the rendering with only minimal communication between the CPU and GPU. A consistent definition of conical frusta including texture parametrization and a continuous surface normal is provided. Rendering is performed by analytical ray casting of the relief‐mapped frusta directly on the GPU. We demonstrate both static and animated objects rendered using our technique and compare to polygonal renderings of similar quality.     

Shape Decomposition using Modal Analysis

We introduce a novel algorithm that decomposes a deformable shape into meaningful parts requiring only a single input pose. Using modal analysis, we are able to identify parts of the shape that tend to move rigidly. We define a deformation energy on the shape, enabling modal analysis to find the typical deformations of the shape. We then find a decomposition of the shape such that the typical deformations can be well approximated with deformation fields that are rigid in each part of the decomposition. We optimize for the best decomposition, which captures how the shape deforms. A hierarchical refinement scheme makes it possible to compute more detailed decompositions for some parts of the shape.
Although our algorithm does not require user intervention, it is possible to control the process by directly changing the deformation energy, or interactively refining the decomposition as necessary. Due to the construction of the energy function and the properties of modal analysis, the computed decompositions are robust to changes in pose as well as meshing, noise, and even imperfections such as small holes in the surface.     

Gromov-Hausdorff Stable Signatures for Shapes using Persistence

We introduce a family of signatures for finite metric spaces, possibly endowed with real valued functions, based on the persistence diagrams of suitable filtrations built on top of these spaces. We prove the stability of our signatures under Gromov-Hausdorff perturbations of the spaces. We also extend these results to metric spaces equipped with measures. Our signatures are well-suited for the study of unstructured point cloud data, which we illustrate through an application in shape classification.     

Part‐type Segmentation of Articulated Voxel‐Shapes using the Junction Rule

We present a part‐type segmentation method for articulated voxel‐shapes based on curve skeletons. Shapes are considered to consist of several simpler, intersecting shapes. Our method is based on the junction rule: the observation that two intersecting shapes generate an additional junction in their joined curve‐skeleton near the place of intersection. For each curve‐skeleton point, we construct a piecewise‐geodesic loop on the shape surface. Starting from the junctions, we search along the curve skeleton for points whose associated loops make for suitable part cuts. The segmentations are robust to noise and discretization artifacts, because the curve skeletonization incorporates a single user‐parameter to filter spurious curve‐skeleton branches. Furthermore, segment borders are smooth and minimally twisting by construction. We demonstrate our method on several real‐world examples and compare it to existing part‐type segmentation methods.     

As‐Rigid‐AsPossible Distance Field Metamorphosis

Widely used for morphing between objects with arbitrary topology, distance field interpolation (DFI) handles topological transition naturally without the need for correspondence or remeshing, unlike surface‐based interpolation approaches. However, lack of correspondence in DFI also leads to ineffective control over the morphing process. In particular, unless the user specifies a dense set of landmarks, it is not even possible to measure the distortion of intermediate shapes during interpolation, let alone control it. To remedy such issues, we introduce an approach for establishing correspondence between the interior of two arbitrary objects, formulated as an optimal mass transport problem with a sparse set of landmarks. This correspondence enables us to compute non‐rigid warping functions that better align the source and target objects as well as to incorporate local rigidity constraints to perform as‐rigid‐aspossible DFI. We demonstrate how our approach helps achieve flexible morphing results with a small number of landmarks.