Connectivity shapes

Author

Isenburg, Martin ; Gumhold, Stefan ; Gotsman, Craig

Author_Institution

North Carolina Univ., Chapel Hill, NC, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

21-26 Oct. 2001

Firstpage

135

Lastpage

552

Abstract

We describe a method to visualize the connectivity graph of a mesh using a natural embedding in 3D space. This uses a 3D shape representation that is based solely on mesh connectivity: the connectivity shape. Given a connectivity, we define its natural geometry as a smooth embedding in space with uniform edge lengths and describe efficient techniques to compute it. Our main contribution is to demonstrate that a surprising amount of geometric information is implicit in the connectivity. We also show how to generate connectivity shapes that approximate given 3D shapes. Potential applications of connectivity shapes to modeling and mesh coding are described.

Keywords

data visualisation; graph theory; mesh generation; 3D space; connectivity graph visualization; connectivity shapes; geometric information; implicit geometry; mesh coding; mesh connectivity; natural embedding; natural geometry; polygon meshes; shape compression; shape representation; smooth embedding; uniform edge lengths; Animals; Clouds; Computational geometry; Embedded computing; Energy states; Mesh generation; Shape; Springs; Topology; Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Visualization, 2001. VIS '01. Proceedings

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7201-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/VISUAL.2001.964504

Filename

964504