| Polyhedral
Branching
Sponsored by:
1994-1995 University Seed Grant Program, OSU Office of Research
PI: Midori Kitagawa, Department of
Art
A
major problem in computer art, computer animation, CAD, scientific
visualization, and other 3D computer graphics related projects
is the creation of 3D polyhedral models to be used in the
project. Many solutions have been found, but many of these
solutions do not permit the user to easily construct shapes
of organic branching structures such as trees and plants.
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This
research had the following objectives:
1. Develop a modeling algorithm and its implementation
which creates branching objects with 2-manifold surfaces
as polygon meshes.
2. Create a user friendly interface for the above implementation.
3. Solve numerical problems expected to be caused by
repetitive application of the union operation in the
creation of a branching object with a 2-manifold surface
as a polygon mesh.
4. Demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm
through experiments with a wide variety of polygon meshes.
The
implementation with a user friendly interface facilitated
the creation of 3D branching objects used in various
fields such as art, education, medicine, CAD, visualization,
and simulation. If one creates a translucent starfish
using an existing branching object modeler, unnecessary
portions of a non-2-manifold surface which exist in
the interior of the starfish are visible. This implementation
created branching objects which look correct and nice
even when the objects are translucent or transparent.
This is an important aspect which allows branching models
to be more appropriate for scientific visualization
and which gives artists greater freedom in their creative
activities.
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