DigitalSculpture: A Subdivision-based Approach to Interactive Implicit Surface Modeling

Virtual sculptures created in our DigitalSculpture modeling environment.

Virtual sculptures created in our DigitalSculpture modeling environment.

Kevin T. McDonnell, Yu-Sung Chang, and Hong Qin

Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Graphical Models, Vol. 67, No. 4, July 2005, pages 347-369

This paper presents DigitalSculpture, an interactive sculpting environment founded upon iso-surfaces extracted from recursively subdivided, 3D irregular grids. Our unique implicit surface model arises from an interpolatory, volumetric subdivision scheme that is C1 continuous across the domains dened by arbitrary 3D irregular grids. We assign scalar coefcients and color to each control vertex and allow these quantities to participate in the volumetric subdivision of irregular grids. In the subdivision limit, a virtual sculpture is obtained by extracting the zero-level from the volumetric, scalar eld dened over the irregular grid. This novel shape geometry extends concepts from solid modeling, recursive subdivision, and implicit surfaces; facilitates many techniques for interactive sculpting; permits rapid, local evaluation of iso-surfaces; and affords level-of-detail control of the sculpted surfaces.

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