This thesis describes a general method for automatic reconstruction of accurate, concise, piecewise smooth surfaces from unorganized 3D points. Instances of surface reconstruction arise in numerous scientific and engineering applications, including reverse-engineering--the automatic generation of CAD models from physical objects.
Previous surface reconstruction methods have typically required additional knowledge, such as structure in the data, known surface genus, or orientation information. In contrast, the method outlined in this thesis requires only the 3D coordinates of the data points. From the data, the method is able to automatically infer the topological type of the surface, its geometry, and the presence and location of features such as boundaries, creases, and corners.
The reconstruction method has three major phases: (1) initial surface estimation, (2) mesh optimization, and (3) piecewise smooth surface optimization. A key ingredient in phase 3, and another principal contribution of this thesis, is the introduction of a new class of piecewise smooth representations based on subdivision. The effectiveness of the three-phase reconstruction method is demonstrated on a number of examples using both simulated and real data.
Phases 2 and 3 of the surface reconstruction method can also be used to approximate existing surface models. By casting surface approximation as a global optimization problem with an energy function that directly measures deviation of the approximation from the original surface, models are obtained that exhibit excellent accuracy to conciseness trade-offs. Examples of piecewise linear and piecewise smooth approximations are generated for various surfaces, including meshes, NURBS surfaces, CSG models, and implicit surfaces.

/pdf/surface-reconstruction-from-unorganized-points-4377nlb52v.pdf

Surface reconstruction from unorganized points

We show that surface reconstruction from oriented points can be cast as a spatial Poisson problem. This Poisson formulation considers all the points at once, without resorting to heuristic spatial partitioning or blending, and is therefore highly resilient to data noise. Unlike radial basis function schemes, our Poisson approach allows a hierarchy of locally supported basis functions, and therefore the solution reduces to a well conditioned sparse linear system. We describe a spatially adaptive multiscale algorithm whose time and space complexities are proportional to the size of the reconstructed model. Experimenting with publicly available scan data, we demonstrate reconstruction of surfaces with greater detail than previously achievable.

Poisson surface reconstruction

We construct a new class of positive definite and compactly supported radial functions which consist of a univariate polynomial within their support. For given smoothness and space dimension it is proved that they are of minimal degree and unique up to a constant factor. Finally, we establish connections between already known functions of this kind.

Piecewise polynomial, positive definite and compactly supported radial functions of minimal degree

We use polyharmonic Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) to reconstruct smooth, manifold surfaces from point-cloud data and to repair incomplete meshes. An object's surface is defined implicitly as the zero set of an RBF fitted to the given surface data. Fast methods for fitting and evaluating RBFs allow us to model large data sets, consisting of millions of surface points, by a single RBF — previously an impossible task. A greedy algorithm in the fitting process reduces the number of RBF centers required to represent a surface and results in significant compression and further computational advantages. The energy-minimisation characterisation of polyharmonic splines result in a “smoothest” interpolant. This scale-independent characterisation is well-suited to reconstructing surfaces from non-uniformly sampled data. Holes are smoothly filled and surfaces smoothly extrapolated. We use a non-interpolating approximation when the data is noisy. The functional representation is in effect a solid model, which means that gradients and surface normals can be determined analytically. This helps generate uniform meshes and we show that the RBF representation has advantages for mesh simplification and remeshing applications. Results are presented for real-world rangefinder data.

/pdf/reconstruction-and-representation-of-3d-objects-with-radial-1col9c83sl.pdf

Reconstruction and representation of 3D objects with radial basis functions

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/65935/01/Forr_09.pdf

Recent advances in surrogate-based optimization

We advocate the use of point sets to represent shapes. We provide a definition of a smooth manifold surface from a set of points close to the original surface. The definition is based on local maps from differential geometry, which are approximated by the method of moving least squares (MLS). The computation of points on the surface is local, which results in an out-of-core technique that can handle any point set. We show that the approximation error is bounded and present tools to increase or decrease the density of the points, thus allowing an adjustment of the spacing among the points to control the error. To display the point set surface, we introduce a novel point rendering technique. The idea is to evaluate the local maps according to the image resolution. This results in high quality shading effects and smooth silhouettes at interactive frame rates.

/pdf/computing-and-rendering-point-set-surfaces-sb6ln9ovj9.pdf

Computing and rendering point set surfaces

A general method for near-best approximations to functionals on R d , using scattered-data information is discussed. The method is actually the moving least-squares method, presented by the Backus-Gilbert approach. It is shown that the method works very well for interpolation, smoothing and derivatives' approximations. For the interpolation problem this approach gives Mclain's method. The method is near-best in the sense that the local error is bounded in terms of the error of a local best polynomial approximation. The interpolation approximation in R d is shown to be a C∞ function, and an approximation order result is proven for quasi-uniform sets of data points.

/pdf/the-approximation-power-of-moving-least-squares-54b8mx7wwf.pdf

The approximation power of moving least-squares

We advocate the use of point sets to represent shapes. We provide a definition of a smooth manifold surface from a set of points close to the original surface. The definition is based on local maps from differential geometry, which are approximated by the method of moving least squares (MLS). We present tools to increase or decrease the density of the points, thus, allowing an adjustment of the spacing among the points to control the fidelity of the representation. To display the point set surface, we introduce a novel point rendering technique. The idea is to evaluate the local maps according to the image resolution. This results in high quality shading effects and smooth silhouettes at interactive frame rates.

Point set surfaces

A 4-point interpolatory subdivision scheme for curve design

We present an object-space morphing technique that blends the interiors of given two- or three-dimensional shapes rather than their boundaries. The morph is rigid in the sense that local volumes are least-distorting as they vary from their source to target configurations. Given a boundary vertex correspondence, the source and target shapes are decomposed into isomorphic simplicial complexes. For the simplicial complexes, we find a closed-form expression allocating the paths of both boundary and interior vertices from source to target locations as a function of time. Key points are the identification of the optimal simplex morphing and the appropriate definition of an error functional whose minimization defines the paths of the vertices. Each pair of corresponding simplices defines an affine transformation, which is factored into a rotation and a stretching transformation. These local transformations are naturally interpolated over time and serve as the basis for composing a global coherent least-distorting transformation.

/pdf/as-rigid-as-possible-shape-interpolation-3lcey7tu1g.pdf

David Levin

Papers

Computing and rendering point set surfaces

The approximation power of moving least-squares

Point set surfaces

A 4-point interpolatory subdivision scheme for curve design

As-rigid-as-possible shape interpolation