An interactive deformation technique with triangles and distance functions

Abstract

In this thesis, a new interactive deformation technique is presented. In this technique, triangles are used as deformation primitives. User defined source and target triangles define local coordinates. These local coordinates determine a unique translation vector for any given point in space. A set of blending functions is provided to effectively interpolate these translation vectors from each triangle to compute a combined translation. These combined translation vectors are used to transform each control point. In two dimensional space, each control point can be assigned to the vertices of a texture mapped grid. Deformation of the grid then provides interactive deformation of the texture that is mapped to the grid. In three dimensional space, the vertices that make up a polygonal representation of a model can be deformed interactively.