Displaced subdivision surfaces of animated meshes

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel technique for converting a given animated mesh into a series of displaced subdivision surfaces. Instead of independently converting each mesh frame in the animated mesh, our technique produces displaced subdivision surfaces that share the same topology of the control mesh and a single displacement map. We first propose a conversion framework that enables sharing the same control mesh topology and a single displacement map among frames, and then present the details of the components in the framework. Each component is specifically designed to minimize the shape conversion errors that can be caused by enforcing a single displacement map. The resulting displaced subdivision surfaces have a compact representation, while reproducing the details of the original animated mesh. The representation can also be used for efficient rendering on modern graphics hardware that supports accelerated rendering of subdivision surfaces. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.