Abstract:
This paper presents a new approach to 3-D shape metamorphosis. We
express the interpolation of two shapes as a process where one
shape deforms to maximize its similarity with another shape. The
process incrementally optimizes an objective function while deforming
an implicit surface model. We represent the deformable surface as a
level set (iso-surface) of a densely sampled scalar function of 3
dimensions. Such level-set models have been shown to mimic
conventional parametric deformable surface models by encoding surface
movements as changes in the greyscale values of a volume dataset.
Thus, a well-founded mathematical structure leads to a set of
procedures that describes how voxel values can be manipulated to
create deformations that are represented as a sequence of volumes.
The result is a 3-D morphing method that offers several advantages
over previous methods including minimal need for user input, no model
parameterization, flexible topology, and sub-voxel accuracy.