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Medial Spheres for Shape Representation - CIM - McGill University

Medial Spheres for Shape Representation - CIM - McGill University

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1.1.1 Parametric/Boundary <strong>Representation</strong>s<br />

In this type of shape representation, an object’s surface is approximated using simple<br />

patches, each parametrizable. The boundary is thus piecewise parametric, and the individ-<br />

ual patches can be selected and assembled so as to provide varying degrees of smoothness.<br />

The most popular kind of parametric representation is a triangle mesh, where the boundary<br />

is approximated using triangle patches. Such a boundary is thus C 0 -continuous, and often<br />

is designed to be a manifold mesh (locally topologically equivalent to a disk). The reader<br />

is referred to [22] <strong>for</strong> a discussion of mesh manifoldness. Alternative patches based on<br />

splines offer higher-order continuity and faster convergence to the object being modeled.<br />

Polygon meshes are the de facto standard in the computer graphics and geometry<br />

processing communities <strong>for</strong> representing 3D objects. Such meshes may be generated by<br />

connecting points sampled on the shape boundary. The area of ‘surface reconstruction’ is<br />

concerned with the generation of qualitatively useful meshes from point samples. They<br />

may also be generated by artists using modeling tools. Polygon meshes offer sufficient<br />

flexibility to represent both the coarse and the fine levels of detail of the shape being mod-<br />

eled. There exist algorithms that enable efficient operations on meshes, such as simplifica-<br />

tion, smoothing, and de<strong>for</strong>mation. Efficient rendering of polygon meshes is made possible<br />

in practice via hardware acceleration on modern graphics cards. However, en<strong>for</strong>cing mesh<br />

quality, especially as the mesh is altered, can be challenging. Further, because the inte-<br />

rior of the object is not represented explicitly and the number of boundary patches can<br />

be very large, point-location queries and distance tests can be expensive. For a thorough<br />

discussion on advances in polygon mesh processing, please see [22].<br />

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