Published July 2002 | public
Journal Article

Level set surface editing operators

Abstract

We present a level set framework for implementing editing operators for surfaces. Level set models are deformable implicit surfaces where the deformation of the surface is controlled by a speed function in the level set partial differential equation. In this paper we define a collection of speed functions that produce a set of surface editing operators. The speed functions describe the velocity at each point on the evolving surface in the direction of the surface normal. All of the information needed to deform a surface is encapsulated in the speed function, providing a simple, unified computational framework. The user combines pre-defined building blocks to create the desired speed function. The surface editing operators are quickly computed and may be applied both regionally and globally. The level set framework offers several advantages. 1) By construction, self-intersection cannot occur, which guarantees the generation of physically-realizable, simple, closed surfaces. 2) Level set models easily change topological genus, and 3) are free of the edge connectivity and mesh quality problems associated with mesh models. We present five examples of surface editing operators: blending, smoothing, sharpening, openings/closings and embossing. We demonstrate their effectiveness on several scanned objects and scan-converted models.

Additional Information

© 2002 ACM. We would like to thank Mathieu Desbrun for his helpful suggestions, and Katrine Museth and Cici Koenig for helping with the figures. The Greek bust and human head models were provided by Cyberware Inc. The dragon and griffin models were provided by the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory. The teapot model was provided by the University of Utah's Geometric Design and Computation Group. This work was financially supported by National Science Foundation grants ASC-89-20219, ACI-9982273 and ACI-0083287.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023