Solid Geometry Processing on Deconstructed Domains

Many tasks in geometry processing are modelled as variational problems solved numerically using the finite element method. For solid shapes, this requires a volumetric discretization, such as a boundary conforming tetrahedral mesh. Unfortunately, tetrahedral meshing remains an open challenge and existing methods either struggle to conform to complex boundary surfaces or require manual intervention to prevent failure. Rather than create a single volumetric mesh for the entire shape, we advocate for solid geometry processing on deconstructed domains, where a large and complex shape is composed of overlapping solid subdomains. As each smaller and simpler part is now easier to tetrahedralize, the question becomes how to account for overlaps during problem modelling and how to couple solutions on each subdomain together algebraically. We explore how and why previous coupling methods fail, and propose a method that couples solid domains only along their boundary surfaces. We demonstrate the superiority of this method through empirical convergence tests and qualitative applications to solid geometry processing on a variety of popular second‐order and fourth‐order partial differential equations.     

车身CAD/CAM扫描曲面的造型方法

本文介绍了与曲面造型方法有关的几个概念;从理论上阐述了扫描曲面的生成方法;重点论述了在汽车车身曲面造型中经常出现的各类扫描曲面的造型方法;最后介绍了扫描曲面的造型方法在实际车身零件曲面造型中的应用。     

Image‐based modeling of 3D objects with curved surfaces

This paper addresses an image‐based method for modeling 3D objects with curved surfaces based on the non‐uniform rational B‐splines (NURBS) representation. The user fits the feature curves on a few calibrated images with 2D NURBS curves using the interactive user interface. Then, 3D NURBS curves are constructed by stereo reconstruction of the corresponding feature curves. Using these as building blocks, NURBS surfaces are reconstructed by the known surface building methods including bilinear surfaces, ruled surfaces, generalized cylinders, and surfaces of revolution. In addition to them, we also employ various advanced techniques, including skinned surfaces, swept surfaces, and boundary patches. Based on these surface modeling techniques, it is possible to build various types of 3D shape models with textured curved surfaces without much effort. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autocalibration of multiprojector CAVE-like immersive environments

In this paper, we present the first method for the geometric autocalibration of multiple projectors on a set of CAVE-like immersive display surfaces including truncated domes and 4 or 5-wall CAVEs (three side walls, floor, and/or ceiling). All such surfaces can be categorized as swept surfaces and multiple projectors can be registered on them using a single uncalibrated camera without using any physical markers on the surface. Our method can also handle nonlinear distortion in the projectors, common in compact setups where a short throw lens is mounted on each projector. Further, when the whole swept surface is not visible from a single camera view, we can register the projectors using multiple pan and tilted views of the same camera. Thus, our method scales well with different size and resolution of the display. Since we recover the 3D shape of the display, we can achieve registration that is correct from any arbitrary viewpoint appropriate for head-tracked single-user virtual reality systems. We can also achieve wallpapered registration, more appropriate for multiuser collaborative explorations. Though much more immersive than common surfaces like planes and cylinders, general swept surfaces are used today only for niche display environments. Even the more popular 4 or 5-wall CAVE is treated as a piecewise planar surface for calibration purposes and hence projectors are not allowed to be overlapped across the corners. Our method opens up the possibility of using such swept surfaces to create more immersive VR systems without compromising the simplicity of having a completely automatic calibration technique. Such calibration allows completely arbitrary positioning of the projectors in a 5-wall CAVE, without respecting the corners.     

Image-Swept Volumes

Many graphical objects can be represented by swept volumes (including its subset — generalised cylinders) by sweeping 2D or 3D templates along 3D trajectories. In this paper, we present a new approach for constructing swept volumes using image templates. We utilise scalar fields as our underlying data type, and employ volume ray casting techniques for rendering swept volumes in their original sweeping specifications as well as in their voxelised approximations. In addition to some simple image‐swept volumes, we also treat multi‐channel image templates, video templates, generalised sweeps, and self‐intersecting trajectories. This approach enables us to model swept volumes with heterogeneous interiors and amorphous effects. It also facilitates the use of constructive volume geometry for creating complex scenes in both modelling and rendering space.     

Generalization of the imprint method to general surfaces of revolution for NC machining

This paper presents a method of determining the shape of the surface swept by a generalized milling tool that follows a 5-axis tool path for machining curved surfaces. The method is a generalization of an earlier technique for toroidal tools that is based on identifying grazing points on the tool surface. We present a new proof that the points constructed by this earlier method are in fact grazing points, and we show that this previous method can be used to construct grazing points on (and only on) the sphere, the cone, and the torus. We then present a more general method that can compute grazing points on a general surface of revolution. The advantage of both methods is that they use simple, geometric formulas to compute grazing points.     

Topological correction of hypertextured implicit surfaces for ray casting

Hypertextures are a useful modelling tool in that they can add three-dimensional detail to the surface of otherwise smooth objects. Hypertextures can be rendered as implicit surfaces, resulting in objects with a complex but well defined boundary. However, representing a hypertexture as an implicit surface often results in many small parts being detached from the main surface, turning an object into a disconnected set. Depending on the context, this can detract from the realism in a scene, where one usually does not expect a solid object to have clouds of smaller objects floating around it. We present a topology correction technique, integrated in a ray casting algorithm for hypertextured implicit surfaces, that detects and removes all the surface components that have become disconnected from the main surface. Our method works with implicit surfaces that are C² continuous and uses Morse theory to find the critical points of the surface. The method follows the separatrix lines joining the critical points to isolate disconnected components.     

Accurate Simplification of Multi‐Chart Textured Models

Scanning and acquisition methods produce highly detailed surface meshes that need multi‐chart parameterizations to reduce stretching and distortion. From these complex shape surfaces, high‐quality approximations are automatically generated by using surface simplification techniques. Multi‐chart textures hinder the quality of the simplification of these techniques for two reasons: either the chart boundaries cannot be simplified leading to a lack of geometric fidelity; or texture distortions and artefacts appear near the simplified boundaries. In this paper, we present an edge‐collapse based simplification method that provides an accurate, low‐resolution approximation from a multi‐chart textured model. For each collapse, the model is reparameterized by local bijective mappings to avoid texture distortions and chart boundary artefacts on the simplified mesh due to the geometry changes. To better apply the appearance attributes and to guarantee geometric fidelity, we drive the simplification process with the quadric error metrics weighted by a local area distortion measure.     

From A Medial Surface To A Mesh

Medial surfaces are well‐known and interesting surface skeletons. As such, they can describe the topology and the geometry of a 3D closed object. The link between an object and its medial surface is also intuitively understood by people. We want to exploit such skeletons to use them in applications like shape creation and shape deformation. For this purpose, we need to define medial surfaces as Shape Representation Models (SRMs). One of the very first task of a SRM is to offer a visualization of the shape it describes. However, achieving this with a medial surface remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a method to build a mesh that approximates an object only described by a medial surface. To do so, we use a volumetric approach based on the construction of an octree. Then, we mesh the boundary of that octree to get a coarse approximation of the object. Finally, we refine this mesh using an original migration algorithm. Quantitative and qualitative studies, on objects coming from digital modeling and laser scans, shows the efficiency of our method in providing high quality surfaces with a reasonable computational complexity.     

A Linear Variational System for Modelling From Curves

We present a linear system for modelling 3D surfaces from curves. Our system offers better performance, stability and precision in control than previous non‐linear systems. By exploring the direct relationship between a standard higher‐order Laplacian editing framework and Hermite spline curves, we introduce a new form of Cauchy constraint that makes our system easy to both implement and control. We introduce novel workflows that simplify the construction of 3D models from sketches. We show how to convert existing 3D meshes into our curve‐based representation for subsequent editing and modelling, allowing our technique to be applied to a wide range of existing 3D content.     

Adaptive marching cubes

The marching cubes algorithm (MC) is a powerful technique for surface rendering that can produce very high-quality images. However, it is not suitable for interactive manipulation of the 3D surfaces constructed from high-resolution volume datasets in terms of both space and time. In this paper, we present an adaptive version of MC called adaptive marching cubes (AMC). It significantly reduces the number of triangles representing the surface by adapting the size of the triangles to the shape of the surface. This improves the performance of the manipulation of the 3D surfaces. A typical example with the volume dataset of size 256×256×113 shows that the number of triangles is reduced by 55%. The quality of images produced by AMC is similar to that of MC. One of the fundamental problems encountered with adaptive algorithms is thecrack problem. Cracks may be created between two neighboring cubes processed with different levels of subdivision. We solve the crack problem by patching the cracks using polygons of the smae shape as those of the cracks. We propose a simple, but complete, method by first abstracting 22 basic configurations of arbitrarily sized cracks and then reducing the handling of these configurations to a simple rule. It requires onlyO(n ²) working memory for an×n×n volume data set.     

Polygonal Boundary Evaluation of Minkowski Sums and Swept Volumes

We present a novel technique for the efficient boundary evaluation of sweep operations applied to objects in polygonal boundary representation. These sweep operations include Minkowski addition, offsetting, and sweeping along a discrete rigid motion trajectory. Many previous methods focus on the construction of a polygonal superset (containing self‐intersections and spurious internal geometry) of the boundary of the volumes which are swept. Only few are able to determine a clean representation of the actual boundary, most of them in a discrete volumetric setting. We unify such superset constructions into a succinct common formulation and present a technique for the robust extraction of a polygonal mesh representing the outer boundary, i.e. it makes no general position assumptions and always yields a manifold, watertight mesh. It is exact for Minkowski sums and approximates swept volumes polygonally. By using plane‐based geometry in conjunction with hierarchical arrangement computations we avoid the necessity of arbitrary precision arithmetics and extensive special case handling. By restricting operations to regions containing pieces of the boundary, we significantly enhance the performance of the algorithm.     

Controllable C1 continuous blending of time-dependent parametric surfaces

This paper proposes the concept of blending time-dependent varying surfaces, and develops a new method to create a controllable C1 continuous blending surface between primary parametric surfaces whose position and shape change with time. We treat it as a boundary-valued problem defined by the mathematical model of a vectored dynamic fourth-order partial differential equation subjected to time-dependent C1 continuous blending boundary constraints. High performance blending surface generation is achieved through the development of an approximate analytical solution of the mathematical model. We investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the solution, study the effective shape control of the blending surfaces, and apply the obtained solution to tackle surface blending problems. The applications demonstrate that our proposed approach is very effective and efficient in dealing with controllable C1 continuous surface blending between time-dependent varying parametric surfaces.     

Perspective silhouette of a general swept volume

We present an efficient and robust algorithm for computing the perspective silhouette of the boundary of a general swept volume. We also construct the topology of connected components of the silhouette. At each instant t, a three-dimensional object moving along a trajectory touches the envelope surface of its swept volume along a characteristic curve K^t. The same instance of the moving object has a silhouette curve L^t on its own boundary. The intersection K^t∩L^t contributes to the silhouette of the general swept volume. We reformulate this problem as a system of two polynomial equations in three variables. The connected components of the resulting silhouette curves are constructed by detecting the instances where the two curves K^t and L^t intersect each other tangentially on the surface of the moving object. We also consider a general case where the eye position changes while moving along a predefined path. The problem is reformulated as a system of two polynomial equations in four variables, where the zero-set is a two-manifold. By analyzing the topology of the zero-set, we achieve an efficient algorithm for generating a continuous animation of perspective silhouettes of a general swept volume.     

Controlled Metamorphosis Between Skeleton‐Driven Animated Polyhedral Meshes of Arbitrary Topologies

Enabling animators to smoothly transform between animated meshes of differing topologies is a long‐standing problem in geometric modelling and computer animation. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid approach built upon the advantages of scalar field‐based models (often called implicit surfaces) which can easily change their topology by changing their defining scalar field. Given two meshes, animated by their rigging‐skeletons, we associate each mesh with its own approximating implicit surface. This implicit surface moves synchronously with the mesh. The shape‐metamorphosis process is performed in several steps: first, we collapse the two meshes to their corresponding approximating implicit surfaces, then we transform between the two implicit surfaces and finally we inverse transition from the resulting metamorphosed implicit surface to the target mesh. The examples presented in this paper demonstrating the results of the proposed technique were implemented using an in‐house plug‐in for Maya?.     

On the shape of a set of points and lines in the plane

Detailed geometric models of the real world are in increasing demand. LiDAR data is appropriate to reconstruct urban models. In urban scenes, the individual surfaces can be reconstructed and connected to form the scene geometry. There are various methods for reconstructing the free‐form shape of a point sample on a single surface. However, these methods do not take the context of the surface into account. We present the guided α‐shape: an extension of the well known α‐shape that uses lines (guides) to indicate preferred locations for the boundary of the shape. The guided α‐shape uses (parts of) these lines as boundary where the points suggest that this is appropriate. We prove that the guided α‐shape can be constructed in O((n + m) log (n + m)) time, from an input of n points and m guides. We apply guided α‐shapes to urban reconstruction from LiDAR, where neighboring surfaces can be connected conveniently along their intersection lines into adjacent surfaces of a 3D model. We analyze guided α‐shapes of both synthetic and real data and show they are consistently better than α‐shapes for this application.     

Analysis and verification of the boundary surfaces of solid objects

Triangulation of complex three-dimensional objects is a time-consuming process, and the boundary surfaces of the object have to be checked very carefully to ensure no crror is made. With the increased use of computer graphics in the generation of complicated object shapes, such as aircraft, space vessels, machine parts, physical models, etc., visual inspection alone is not good enough to affirm the validity of the object, and a thorough verification of the output from a CAD system is necessary to ensure that the object is well defined and complies with the input requirements of the mesh generator.This paper describes such a data verification procedure for general curved surfaces and objects defined by the boundary surface modelling technique. The quality of individual elements, the overall topological structures, and geometrical correctness in terms of intersections, close touches and sharp angles will all be studied and verified. Several engineering objects are analysed to illustrate the practical applications of the procedure.