In this work, we study the spectra and eigenmodes of the Hessian of various discrete surface energies and discuss applications to shape analysis. In particular, we consider a physical model that describes the vibration modes and frequencies of a surface through the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the Hessian of a deformation energy, and we
derive a closed form representation for the Hessian (at the rest state of the energy) for a general class of deformation energies. Furthermore, we design a quadratic energy, such that the eigenmodes of the Hessian of
this energy are sensitive to the extrinsic curvature of the surface. Based on these spectra and eigenmodes, we derive two shape signatures. One that measures the similarity of points on a surface, and another that
can be used to identify features of the surface. In addition, we discuss a
spectral quadrangulation scheme for surfaces.
Riemann surfaces naturally appear in the analysis of complex functions that are branched over the complex plane. However, they usually possess a complicated topology and are thus hard to understand. We present an algorithm for constructing Riemann surfaces as meshes in R3 from explicitly given branch points with corresponding branch indices. The constructed surfaces cover the complex plane by the canonical
projection onto R2 and can therefore be considered as multivalued graphs
over the plane – hence they provide a comprehensible visualization of the
topological structure. Complex functions are elegantly visualized using domain coloring on
a subset of C. By applying domain coloring to the automatically constructed Riemann surface models, we generalize this approach to deal with functions which cannot be entirely visualized in the complex plane.
We present a novel algorithm for automatic parameterization of tube-like surfaces of arbitrary genus such as the surfaces of knots, trees, blood vessels, neurons, or any tubular graph with a globally consistent stripe texture. We use the principal curvature frame field of the underlying tube-like surface to guide the creation of a global, topologically consistent stripe parameterization of the surface. Our algorithm extends the QuadCover algorithm and is based, first, on the use of so-called projective vector fields instead of frame fields, and second, on different types of branch points. That does not only simplify the mathematical theory, but also reduces computation time by the decomposition of the underlying stiffness matrices.
We study discrete curvatures computed from nets of curvature lines on a given smooth surface and prove their uniform convergence to smooth principal curvatures. We provide explicit error bounds, with constants depending only on properties of the smooth limit surface and the shape regularity of the discrete net.
Classical surface parameterization algorithms often place singularities
in order to enhance the quality of the resulting parameter map. Unfortunately, singularities of positive integral index (as the north pole of a sphere) were not handled since they cannot be described with piecewise linear parameter functions on a triangle mesh. Preprocessing is needed to adapt the mesh connectivity. We present an extension to the QuadCover parameterization algorithm [KNP07], which allows to handle those singularities. A singularity of positive integral index can be resolved using bilinear parameter functions on quadrilateral elements. This generalization
of piecewise linear functions for quadrilaterals enriches the space of parameterizations. The resulting parameter map can be visualized by textures using a rendering system which supports quadrilateral elements, or it can be used for remeshing into a pure quad mesh.