A unified Pythagorean hodograph approach to the medial axis transform and offset approximation

AbstractAlgorithms based on Pythagorean hodographs (PH) in the Euclidean plane and in Minkowski space share common goals, the main one being rationality of offsets of planar domains. However, only separate interpolation techniques based on these curves can be found in the literature. It was recently revealed that rational PH curves in the Euclidean plane and in Minkowski space are very closely related. In this paper, we continue the discussion of the interplay between spatial MPH curves and their associated planar PH curves from the point of view of Hermite interpolation. On the basis of this approach we design a new, simple interpolation algorithm. The main advantage of the unifying method presented lies in the fact that it uses, after only some simple additional computations, an arbitrary algorithm for interpolation using planar PH curves also for interpolation using spatial MPH curves. We present the functionality of our method for G1 Hermite data; however, one could also obtain higher order algorithms

Multisided generalisations of Gregory patches

We propose two generalisations of Gregory patches to faces of any valency by using generalised barycentric coordinates in combination with two kinds of multisided Bézier patches. Our first construction builds on S-patches to generalise triangular Gregory patches. The local construction of Chiyokura and Kimura providing G1 continuity between adjoining Bézier patches is generalised so that the novel Gregory S-patches of any valency can be smoothly joined to one another. Our second construction makes a minor adjustment to the generalised Bézier patch structure to allow for cross-boundary derivatives to be defined independently per side. We show that the corresponding blending functions have the inherent ability to blend ribbon data much like the rational blending functions of Gregory patches. Both constructions take as input a polygonal mesh with vertex normals and provide G1 surfaces interpolating the input vertices and normals. Due to the full locality of the methods, they are well suited for geometric modelling as well as computer graphics applications relying on hardware tessellation

Subdivision surface fitting to a dense mesh using ridges and umbilics

Fitting a sparse surface to approximate vast dense data is of interest for many applications: reverse engineering, recognition and compression, etc. The present work provides an approach to fit a Loop subdivision surface to a dense triangular mesh of arbitrary topology, whilst preserving and aligning the original features. The natural ridge-joined connectivity of umbilics and ridge-crossings is used as the connectivity of the control mesh for subdivision, so that the edges follow salient features on the surface. Furthermore, the chosen features and connectivity characterise the overall shape of the original mesh, since ridges capture extreme principal curvatures and ridges start and end at umbilics. A metric of Hausdorff distance including curvature vectors is proposed and implemented in a distance transform algorithm to construct the connectivity. Ridge-colour matching is introduced as a criterion for edge flipping to improve feature alignment. Several examples are provided to demonstrate the feature-preserving capability of the proposed approach

Multisided B-spline Patches Over Extraordinary Regions

We propose a generalised B-spline construction that extends uniform bi-degree B-splines to multisided regions spanned over extraordinary regions in quad-dominant meshes. We show how the structure of the existing cubic multisided B-spline patch can be generalised to work with B-spline basis functions of arbitrary degree and can be spanned over extraordinary vertices as well as extraordinary faces of quad-dominant meshes. The resulting multisided surfaces are Cd-1 continuous internally and connect with Gd-1 continuity to adjacent regular and other multisided B-splines patches. In addition, we design several specialised functions that increase the visual quality of the patches, in both the extraordinary vertex and face settings.<br/