1,381 research outputs found
3D mesh metamorphosis from spherical parameterization for conceptual design
Engineering product design is an information intensive decision-making
process that consists of several phases including design specification
definition, design concepts generation, detailed design and analysis,
and manufacturing. Usually, generating geometry models for
visualization is a big challenge for early stage conceptual design.
Complexity of existing computer aided design packages constrains
participation of people with various backgrounds in the design
process. In addition, many design processes do not take advantage of
the rich amount of legacy information available for new concepts
creation.
The research presented here explores the use of advanced graphical
techniques to quickly and efficiently merge legacy information with
new design concepts to rapidly create new conceptual product designs.
3D mesh metamorphosis framework 3DMeshMorpher was created to
construct new models by navigating in a shape-space of registered
design models. The framework is composed of: i) a fast spherical
parameterization method to map a geometric model (genus-0) onto a unit
sphere; ii) a geometric feature identification and picking technique
based on 3D skeleton extraction; and iii) a LOD controllable 3D
remeshing scheme with spherical mesh subdivision based on the
developedspherical parameterization. This efficient software framework
enables designers to create numerous geometric concepts in real time
with a simple graphical user interface.
The spherical parameterization method is focused on closed genus-zero
meshes. It is based upon barycentric coordinates with convex boundary.
Unlike most existing similar approaches which deal with each vertex in
the mesh equally, the method developed in this research focuses
primarily on resolving overlapping areas, which helps speed the
parameterization process. The algorithm starts by normalizing the
source mesh onto a unit sphere and followed by some initial relaxation
via Gauss-Seidel iterations. Due to its emphasis on solving only
challenging overlapping regions, this parameterization process is much
faster than existing spherical mapping methods.
To ensure the correspondence of features from different models, we
introduce a skeleton based feature identification and picking method
for features alignment. Unlike traditional methods that align single
point for each feature, this method can provide alignments for
complete feature areas. This could help users to create more
reasonable intermediate morphing results with preserved topological
features. This skeleton featuring framework could potentially be
extended to automatic features alignment for geometries with similar
topologies. The skeleton extracted could also be applied for other
applications such as skeleton-based animations.
The 3D remeshing algorithm with spherical mesh subdivision is
developed to generate a common connectivity for different mesh models.
This method is derived from the concept of spherical mesh subdivision.
The local recursive subdivision can be set to match the desired LOD
(level of details) for source spherical mesh. Such LOD is controllable
and this allows various outputs with different resolutions. Such
recursive subdivision then follows by a triangular correction process
which ensures valid triangulations for the remeshing. And the final
mesh merging and reconstruction process produces the remeshing model
with desired LOD specified from user. Usually the final merged model
contains all the geometric details from each model with reasonable
amount of vertices, unlike other existing methods that result in big
amount of vertices in the merged model. Such multi-resolution outputs
with controllable LOD could also be applied in various other computer
graphics applications such as computer games
Surface-guided computing to analyze subcellular morphology and membrane-associated signals in 3D
Signal transduction and cell function are governed by the spatiotemporal
organization of membrane-associated molecules. Despite significant advances in
visualizing molecular distributions by 3D light microscopy, cell biologists
still have limited quantitative understanding of the processes implicated in
the regulation of molecular signals at the whole cell scale. In particular,
complex and transient cell surface morphologies challenge the complete sampling
of cell geometry, membrane-associated molecular concentration and activity and
the computing of meaningful parameters such as the cofluctuation between
morphology and signals. Here, we introduce u-Unwrap3D, a framework to remap
arbitrarily complex 3D cell surfaces and membrane-associated signals into
equivalent lower dimensional representations. The mappings are bidirectional,
allowing the application of image processing operations in the data
representation best suited for the task and to subsequently present the results
in any of the other representations, including the original 3D cell surface.
Leveraging this surface-guided computing paradigm, we track segmented surface
motifs in 2D to quantify the recruitment of Septin polymers by blebbing events;
we quantify actin enrichment in peripheral ruffles; and we measure the speed of
ruffle movement along topographically complex cell surfaces. Thus, u-Unwrap3D
provides access to spatiotemporal analyses of cell biological parameters on
unconstrained 3D surface geometries and signals.Comment: 49 pages, 10 figure
Fast Spherical Drawing of Triangulations: An Experimental Study of Graph Drawing Tools
We consider the problem of computing a spherical crossing-free geodesic drawing of a planar graph: this problem, as well as the closely related spherical parameterization problem, has attracted a lot of attention in the last two decades both in theory and in practice, motivated by a number of applications ranging from texture mapping to mesh remeshing and morphing. Our main concern is to design and implement a linear time algorithm for the computation of spherical drawings provided with theoretical guarantees. While not being aesthetically pleasing, our method is extremely fast and can be used as initial placer for spherical iterative methods and spring embedders. We provide experimental comparison with initial placers based on planar Tutte parameterization. Finally we explore the use of spherical drawings as initial layouts for (Euclidean) spring embedders: experimental evidence shows that this greatly helps to untangle the layout and to reach better local minima
Beyond developable: computational design and fabrication with auxetic materials
We present a computational method for interactive 3D design and rationalization of surfaces via auxetic materials, i.e., flat flexible material that can stretch uniformly up to a certain extent. A key motivation for studying such material is that one can approximate doubly-curved surfaces (such as the sphere) using only flat pieces, making it attractive for fabrication. We physically realize surfaces by introducing cuts into approximately inextensible material such as sheet metal, plastic, or leather. The cutting pattern is modeled as a regular triangular linkage that yields hexagonal openings of spatially-varying radius when stretched. In the same way that isometry is fundamental to modeling developable surfaces, we leverage conformal geometry to understand auxetic design. In particular, we compute a global conformal map with bounded scale factor to initialize an otherwise intractable non-linear optimization. We demonstrate that this global approach can handle non-trivial topology and non-local dependencies inherent in auxetic material. Design studies and physical prototypes are used to illustrate a wide range of possible applications
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