System and method for parametric surface representation from polygonal descriptions of arbitrary objects
US5999188A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 3, 1997 |
| Grant date | Dec 7, 1999 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 3, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T17/20
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The present invention addresses the problem of describing an arbitrary object (up to user-defined limits) given a set of triangles with vertex normals describing the object. A novel method of successively merging traingles into larger and larger patches to compute a set of "as-few-as-possible" Bezier patches is presented. This method is not only applicable to arbitrary objects, but also aims at producing as few patches as possible depending on the geometry of the input object. Also presented are methods to enforce C.sup.0 - and C.sup.1 -continuity between a pair of patches B.sub.L (s,t) and B.sub.R (s,t), placed arbitrarily. The methods perturb the appropnate control points to achieve geometric continuities. For C.sup.0 -continuity the area of the hole between the patches is minimized by formulating the area as a series of linear programs, where the continuity has to be enforced across the adjacent boundary curves B.sub.L (1,t) and B.sub.R (0,t). Similarly, to enforce C.sup.1 -continuity the hole-area in tangential space is minimized.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.