Conformal Surface Morphing with Applications on Facial Expressions

Morphing is the process of changing one figure into another. Some numerical methods of 3D surface morphing by deformable modeling and conformal mapping are shown in this study. It is well known that there exists a unique Riemann conformal mapping from a simply connected surface into a unit disk by the Riemann mapping theorem. The dilation and relative orientations of the 3D surfaces can be linked through the M\"obius transformation due to the conformal characteristic of the Riemann mapping. On the other hand, a 3D surface deformable model can be built via various approaches such as mutual parameterization from direct interpolation or surface matching using landmarks. In this paper, we take the advantage of the unique representation of 3D surfaces by the mean curvatures and the conformal factors associated with the Riemann mapping. By registering the landmarks on the conformal parametric domains, the correspondence of the mean curvatures and the conformal factors for each surfaces can be obtained. As a result, we can construct the 3D deformation field from the surface reconstruction algorithm proposed by Gu and Yau. Furthermore, by composition of the M\"obius transformation and the 3D deformation field, the morphing sequence can be generated from the mean curvatures and the conformal factors on a unified mesh structure by using the cubic spline homotopy. Several numerical experiments of the face morphing are presented to demonstrate the robustness of our approach.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

A Conformal Approach for Surface Inpainting

We address the problem of surface inpainting, which aims to fill in holes or missing regions on a Riemann surface based on its surface geometry. In practical situation, surfaces obtained from range scanners often have holes where the 3D models are incomplete. In order to analyze the 3D shapes effectively, restoring the incomplete shape by filling in the surface holes is necessary. In this paper, we propose a novel conformal approach to inpaint surface holes on a Riemann surface based on its surface geometry. The basic idea is to represent the Riemann surface using its conformal factor and mean curvature. According to Riemann surface theory, a Riemann surface can be uniquely determined by its conformal factor and mean curvature up to a rigid motion. Given a Riemann surface $S$, its mean curvature $H$ and conformal factor $\lambda$ can be computed easily through its conformal parameterization. Conversely, given $\lambda$ and $H$, a Riemann surface can be uniquely reconstructed by solving the Gauss-Codazzi equation on the conformal parameter domain. Hence, the conformal factor and the mean curvature are two geometric quantities fully describing the surface. With this $\lambda$-$H$ representation of the surface, the problem of surface inpainting can be reduced to the problem of image inpainting of $\lambda$ and $H$ on the conformal parameter domain. Once $\lambda$ and $H$ are inpainted, a Riemann surface can be reconstructed which effectively restores the 3D surface with missing holes. Since the inpainting model is based on the geometric quantities $\lambda$ and $H$, the restored surface follows the surface geometric pattern. We test the proposed algorithm on synthetic data as well as real surface data. Experimental results show that our proposed method is an effective surface inpainting algorithm to fill in surface holes on an incomplete 3D models based their surface geometry.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure

QCMC: Quasi-conformal Parameterizations for Multiply-connected domains

This paper presents a method to compute the {\it quasi-conformal parameterization} (QCMC) for a multiply-connected 2D domain or surface. QCMC computes a quasi-conformal map from a multiply-connected domain $S$ onto a punctured disk $D_S$ associated with a given Beltrami differential. The Beltrami differential, which measures the conformality distortion, is a complex-valued function $\mu:S\to\mathbb{C}$ with supremum norm strictly less than 1. Every Beltrami differential gives a conformal structure of $S$. Hence, the conformal module of $D_S$, which are the radii and centers of the inner circles, can be fully determined by $\mu$, up to a M\"obius transformation. In this paper, we propose an iterative algorithm to simultaneously search for the conformal module and the optimal quasi-conformal parameterization. The key idea is to minimize the Beltrami energy subject to the boundary constraints. The optimal solution is our desired quasi-conformal parameterization onto a punctured disk. The parameterization of the multiply-connected domain simplifies numerical computations and has important applications in various fields, such as in computer graphics and vision. Experiments have been carried out on synthetic data together with real multiply-connected Riemann surfaces. Results show that our proposed method can efficiently compute quasi-conformal parameterizations of multiply-connected domains and outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms. Applications of the proposed parameterization technique have also been explored.Comment: 26 pages, 23 figures, submitted. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1402.6908, arXiv:1307.2679 by other author

Computing Quasiconformal Maps on Riemann surfaces using Discrete Curvature Flow

Surface mapping plays an important role in geometric processing. They induce both area and angular distortions. If the angular distortion is bounded, the mapping is called a {\it quasi-conformal} map. Many surface maps in our physical world are quasi-conformal. The angular distortion of a quasi-conformal map can be represented by Beltrami differentials. According to quasi-conformal Teichm\"uller theory, there is an 1-1 correspondence between the set of Beltrami differentials and the set of quasi-conformal surface maps. Therefore, every quasi-conformal surface map can be fully determined by the Beltrami differential and can be reconstructed by solving the so-called Beltrami equation. In this work, we propose an effective method to solve the Beltrami equation on general Riemann surfaces. The solution is a quasi-conformal map associated with the prescribed Beltrami differential. We firstly formulate a discrete analog of quasi-conformal maps on triangular meshes. Then, we propose an algorithm to compute discrete quasi-conformal maps. The main strategy is to define a discrete auxiliary metric of the source surface, such that the original quasi-conformal map becomes conformal under the newly defined discrete metric. The associated map can then be obtained by using the discrete Yamabe flow method. Numerically, the discrete quasi-conformal map converges to the continuous real solution as the mesh size approaches to 0. We tested our algorithm on surfaces scanned from real life with different topologies. Experimental results demonstrate the generality and accuracy of our auxiliary metric method

The Theory of Computational Quasi-conformal Geometry on Point Clouds

Quasi-conformal (QC) theory is an important topic in complex analysis, which studies geometric patterns of deformations between shapes. Recently, computational QC geometry has been developed and has made significant contributions to medical imaging, computer graphics and computer vision. Existing computational QC theories and algorithms have been built on triangulation structures. In practical situations, many 3D acquisition techniques often produce 3D point cloud (PC) data of the object, which does not contain connectivity information. It calls for a need to develop computational QC theories on PCs. In this paper, we introduce the concept of computational QC geometry on PCs. We define PC quasi-conformal (PCQC) maps and their associated PC Beltrami coefficients (PCBCs). The PCBC is analogous to the Beltrami differential in the continuous setting. Theoretically, we show that the PCBC converges to its continuous counterpart as the density of the PC tends to zero. We also theoretically and numerically validate the ability of PCBCs to measure local geometric distortions of PC deformations. With these concepts, many existing QC based algorithms for geometry processing and shape analysis can be easily extended to PC data

3D shape matching and Teichm\"uller spaces of pointed Riemann surfaces

Shape matching represents a challenging problem in both information engineering and computer science, exhibiting not only a wide spectrum of multimedia applications, but also a deep relation with conformal geometry. After reviewing the theoretical foundations and the practical issues involved in this fashinating subject, we focus on two state-of-the-art approaches relying respectively on local features (landmark points) and on global properties (conformal parameterizations). Finally, we introduce the Teichm\"uller space of n-pointed Riemann surfaces of genus g into the realm of multimedia, showing that its beautiful geometry provides a natural unified framework for three-dimensional shape matching.Comment: Extended abstract submitted to MEGA 2011: Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometr

TEMPO: Feature-Endowed Teichm\"uller Extremal Mappings of Point Clouds

In recent decades, the use of 3D point clouds has been widespread in computer industry. The development of techniques in analyzing point clouds is increasingly important. In particular, mapping of point clouds has been a challenging problem. In this paper, we develop a discrete analogue of the Teichm\"{u}ller extremal mappings, which guarantee uniform conformality distortions, on point cloud surfaces. Based on the discrete analogue, we propose a novel method called TEMPO for computing Teichm\"{u}ller extremal mappings between feature-endowed point clouds. Using our proposed method, the Teichm\"{u}ller metric is introduced for evaluating the dissimilarity of point clouds. Consequently, our algorithm enables accurate recognition and classification of point clouds. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method

Spherical Conformal Parameterization of Genus-0 Point Clouds for Meshing

Point cloud is the most fundamental representation of 3D geometric objects. Analyzing and processing point cloud surfaces is important in computer graphics and computer vision. However, most of the existing algorithms for surface analysis require connectivity information. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a mesh structure on point clouds. This task can be simplified with the aid of a parameterization. In particular, conformal parameterizations are advantageous in preserving the geometric information of the point cloud data. In this paper, we extend a state-of-the-art spherical conformal parameterization algorithm for genus-0 closed meshes to the case of point clouds, using an improved approximation of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on data points. Then, we propose an iterative scheme called the North-South reiteration for achieving a spherical conformal parameterization. A balancing scheme is introduced to enhance the distribution of the spherical parameterization. High quality triangulations and quadrangulations can then be built on the point clouds with the aid of the parameterizations. Also, the meshes generated are guaranteed to be genus-0 closed meshes. Moreover, using our proposed spherical conformal parameterization, multilevel representations of point clouds can be easily constructed. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework

A Linear Formulation for Disk Conformal Parameterization of Simply-Connected Open Surfaces

Surface parameterization is widely used in computer graphics and geometry processing. It simplifies challenging tasks such as surface registrations, morphing, remeshing and texture mapping. In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm for computing the disk conformal parameterization of simply-connected open surfaces. A double covering technique is used to turn a simply-connected open surface into a genus-0 closed surface, and then a fast algorithm for parameterization of genus-0 closed surfaces can be applied. The symmetry of the double covered surface preserves the efficiency of the computation. A planar parameterization can then be obtained with the aid of a M\"obius transformation and the stereographic projection. After that, a normalization step is applied to guarantee the circular boundary. Finally, we achieve a bijective disk conformal parameterization by a composition of quasi-conformal mappings. Experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement in the computational time by over 60%. At the same time, our proposed method retains comparable accuracy, bijectivity and robustness when compared with the state-of-the-art approaches. Applications to texture mapping are presented for illustrating the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm

Fast Disk Conformal Parameterization of Simply-connected Open Surfaces

Surface parameterizations have been widely used in computer graphics and geometry processing. In particular, as simply-connected open surfaces are conformally equivalent to the unit disk, it is desirable to compute the disk conformal parameterizations of the surfaces. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for the conformal parameterization of a simply-connected open surface onto the unit disk, which significantly speeds up the computation, enhances the conformality and stability, and guarantees the bijectivity. The conformality distortions at the inner region and on the boundary are corrected by two steps, with the aid of an iterative scheme using quasi-conformal theories. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method