Representing Higher-Order Singularities in Vector Fields on Piecewise Linear Surfaces

  • Authors:
  • Wan-Chiu Li;Bruno Vallet;Nicolas Ray;Bruno Levy

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
  • Year:
  • 2006

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Accurately representing higher-order singularities of vector fields defined on piecewise linear surfaces is a non-trivial problem. In this work, we introduce a concise yet complete interpolation scheme of vector fields on arbitrary triangulated surfaces. The scheme enablesarbitrary singularities to be represented at vertices} The representation can be considered as a facet-based "encoding" of vector fields on piecewise linear surfaces. The vector field is described in polar coordinates over each facet, with a facet edge being chosen as the reference to define the angle. An integer called theperiod jump is associated to each edge of the triangulation to remove the ambiguity when interpolating the direction of the vector fieldbetween two facets that share an edge. To interpolate the vector field, we first linearlyinterpolate the angle of rotation of the vectors along the edges of the facet graph. Then, we use a variant ofNielson's side-vertex scheme to interpolate the vector field over the entire surface. With our representation, we remove the bound imposed on the complexity of singularities that a vertex can represent by its connectivity. This boundis a limitation generally exists in vertex-based linear schemes. Furthermore, using our data structure, the index of a vertex of a vector field can be combinatorily determined.We show the simplicity of the interpolation scheme with a GPU-accelerated algorithm for a LIC-based visualization of the so-defined vector fields, operating in image space. We demonstrate the algorithm applied to various vector fields on curved surfaces.