The computation of visible-surface representations

A computational theory of visible-surface representations is developed. The visible-surface reconstruction process that computes these quantitative representations unifies formal solutions to the key problems of: (1) integrating multiscale constraints on surface depth and orientation from multiple-visual sources; (2) interpolating dense, piecewise-smooth surfaces from these constraints; (3) detecting surface depth and orientation discontinuities to apply boundary conditions on interpolation; and (4) structuring large-scale, distributed-surface representations to achieve computational efficiency. Visible-surface reconstruction is an inverse problem. A well-posed variational formulation results from the use of a controlled-continuity surface model. Discontinuity detection amounts to the identification of this generic model's distributed parameters from the data. Finite-element shape primitives yield a local discretization of the variational principle. The result is an efficient algorithm for visible-surface reconstruction.>