Libigl is an open source C++ library for geometry processing research and development. Dropping the heavy data structures of tradition geometry libraries, libigl is a simple header-only library of encapsulated functions. This combines the rapid prototyping familiar to Matlab or Python programmers with the performance and versatility of C++. The tutorial is a self-contained, hands-on introduction to libigl. Via interactive, step-by-step examples, we demonstrate how to accomplish common geometry processing tasks such as computation of differential quantities and operators, real-time deformation, parametrization, numerical optimization and remeshing. Each section of the lecture notes links to a cross-platform example application.
We introduce libigl with a series of self-contained examples. The purpose of each example is to showcase a feature of libigl while applying to a practical problem in geometry processing. In this chapter, we will present the basic concepts of libigl and introduce a simple mesh viewer that allows to visualize a surface mesh and its attributes. All the tutorial examples are cross-platform and can be compiled on MacOSX, Linux and Windows.
Before getting into the examples, we summarize the main design principles in libigl:
No complex data types. We mostly use matrices and vectors. This greatly favors code reusability and forces the function authors to expose all the parameters used by the algorithm.
Minimal dependencies. We use external libraries only when necessary and we wrap them in a small set of functions.
Header-only. It is straight forward to use our library since it is only one additional include directory in your project. (if you are worried about compilation speed, it is also possible to build the library as a static library)
Function encapsulation. Every function (including its full implementation) is contained in a pair of .h/.cpp files with the same name of the function.
libigl can be downloaded from our github repository or cloned with git:
git clone https://github.com/libigl/libigl.git
The core libigl functionality only depends on the C++ Standard Library and Eigen.
The examples in this tutorial depend on glfw, glew and AntTweakBar. The source code of each library is bundled with libigl and they can be compiled all at once using:
sh compile_dependencies_macosx.sh (MACOSX)
sh compile_dependencies_linux.sh (LINUX)
For windows, precompiled binaries are provided (Visual Studio 2014 64bit).
To build all the examples in the tutorial, you can use the CMakeLists.txt in the tutorial folder:
cd tutorial
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../
make
The examples can also be built independently using the CMakeLists.txt inside each example folder.
A few examples in Chapter 5 requires the CoMiSo solver which has to be downloaded and compiled separately.
libigl uses the Eigen library to encode vector and matrices. We suggest that you keep the dense and sparse quick reference guides at hand while you read the examples in this tutorial.
A triangular mesh is encoded as a pair of matrices:
Eigen::MatrixXd V;
Eigen::MatrixXi F;
V
is a #N by 3 matrix which stores the coordinates of the vertices. Each
row stores the coordinate of a vertex, with its x,y and z coordinates in the first,
second and third column, respectively. The matrix F
stores the triangle
connectivity: each line of F
denotes a triangle whose 3 vertices are
represented as indices pointing to rows of V
.
Note that the order of the vertex indices in F
determines the orientation of
the triangles and it should thus be consistent for the entire surface.
This simple representation has many advantages:
libigl provides input [output] functions to read [write] many common mesh formats. The IO functions are contained in the files read*.h and write*.h. As a general rule each libigl function is contained in a pair of .h/.cpp files with the same name. By default, the .h files include the corresponding cpp files, making the library header-only.
Reading a mesh from a file requires a single libigl function call:
igl::readOFF("../shared/cube.off", V, F);
The function reads the mesh cube.off and it fills the provided V
and F
matrices.
Similarly, a mesh can be written in an OBJ file using:
igl::writeOBJ("cube.obj",V,F);
Example 101 contains a simple mesh converter from OFF to OBJ format.
Libigl provides an glfw-based OpenGL 3.2 viewer to visualize surfaces, their properties and additional debugging informations.
The following code (Example 102) is a basic skeleton for all the examples that will be used in the tutorial. It is a standalone application that loads a mesh and uses the viewer to render it.
#include <igl/readOFF.h>
#include <igl/viewer/Viewer.h>
Eigen::MatrixXd V;
Eigen::MatrixXi F;
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
// Load a mesh in OFF format
igl::readOFF("../shared/bunny.off", V, F);
// Plot the mesh
igl::Viewer viewer;
viewer.data.set_mesh(V, F);
viewer.launch();
}
The function set_mesh
copies the mesh into the viewer.
Viewer.launch()
creates a window, an OpenGL context and it starts the draw loop.
Additional properties can be plotted on the mesh (as we will see later),
and it is possible to extend the viewer with standard OpenGL code.
Please see the documentation in
Viewer.h for more details.
Keyboard and mouse events triggers callbacks that can be registered in the viewer. The viewer supports the following callbacks:
bool (*callback_pre_draw)(Viewer& viewer);
bool (*callback_post_draw)(Viewer& viewer);
bool (*callback_mouse_down)(Viewer& viewer, int button, int modifier);
bool (*callback_mouse_up)(Viewer& viewer, int button, int modifier);
bool (*callback_mouse_move)(Viewer& viewer, int mouse_x, int mouse_y);
bool (*callback_mouse_scroll)(Viewer& viewer, float delta_y);
bool (*callback_key_down)(Viewer& viewer, unsigned char key, int modifiers);
bool (*callback_key_up)(Viewer& viewer, unsigned char key, int modifiers);
A keyboard callback can be used to visualize multiple meshes or different stages of an algorithm, as demonstrated in Example 103, where the keyboard callback changes the visualized mesh depending on the key pressed:
bool key_down(igl::Viewer& viewer, unsigned char key, int modifier)
{
if (key == '1')
{
viewer.data.clear();
viewer.data.set_mesh(V1, F1);
viewer.core.align_camera_center(V1,F1);
}
else if (key == '2')
{
viewer.data.clear();
viewer.data.set_mesh(V2, F2);
viewer.core.align_camera_center(V2,F2);
}
return false;
}
The callback is registered in the viewer as follows:
viewer.callback_key_down = &key_down;
Note that the mesh is cleared before using set_mesh. This has to be called every time the number of vertices or faces of the plotted mesh changes. Every callback returns a boolean value that tells the viewer if the event has been handled by the plugin, or if the viewer should process it normally. This is useful, for example, to disable the default mouse event handling if you want to control the camera directly in your code.
The viewer can be extended using plugins, which are classes that implements all the viewer’s callbacks. See the Viewer_plugin for more details.
Colors and normals can be associated to faces or vertices using the set_colors function:
viewer.data.set_colors(C);
C
is a #C by 3 matrix with one RGB color per row. C
must have as many
rows as the number of faces or the number of vertices of the mesh.
Depending on the size of C
, the viewer applies the color to the faces or to
the vertices.
Colors can be used to visualize a scalar function defined on a surface. The
scalar function is converted to colors using a color transfer function, which
maps a scalar value between 0 and 1 to a color. A simple example of a scalar
field defined on a surface is the z coordinate of each point, which can be
extract from our mesh representation by taking the last column of V
(Example 104). The function igl::jet
can be used to
convert it to colors:
Eigen::VectorXd Z = V.col(2);
igl::jet(Z,true,C);
The first row extracts the third column from V
(the z coordinate of each
vertex) and the second calls a libigl functions that converts a scalar field to colors. The second parameter of jet normalizes the scalar field to lie between 0 and 1 before applying the transfer function.
igl::jet
is an example of a standard function in libigl: it takes simple
types and can be easily reused for many different tasks. Not committing to
heavy data structures types favors simplicity, ease of use and reusability.
In addition to plotting the surface, the viewer supports the visualization of points, lines and text labels: these overlays can be very helful while developing geometric processing algorithms to plot debug informations.
viewer.data.add_points(P,Eigen::RowVector3d(r,g,b));
Draws a point of color r,g,b for each row of P. The point is placed at the coordinates specified in each row of P, which is a #P by 3 matrix.
viewer.data.add_edges(P1,P2,Eigen::RowVector3d(r,g,b);
Draws a line of color r,g,b for each row of P1 and P2, which connects the 3D point in to the point in P2. Both P1 and P2 are of size #P by 3.
viewer.data.add_label(p,str);
Draws a label containing the string str at the position p, which is a vector of length 3.
These functions are demonstrate in Example 105 where
the bounding box of a mesh is plotted using lines and points.
Using matrices to encode the mesh and its attributes allows to write short and
efficient code for many operations, avoiding to write for loops. For example,
the bounding box of a mesh can be found by taking the colwise maximum and minimum of V
:
Eigen::Vector3d m = V.colwise().minCoeff();
Eigen::Vector3d M = V.colwise().maxCoeff();
This chapter illustrates a few discrete quantities that libigl can compute on a mesh and the libigl functions that construct popular discrete differential geometry operators. It also provides an introduction to basic drawing and coloring routines of our viewer.
Surface normals are a basic quantity necessary for rendering a surface. There are a variety of ways to compute and store normals on a triangle mesh. Example 201 demonstrates how to compute and visualize normals with libigl.
Normals are well defined on each triangle of a mesh as the vector orthogonal to triangle’s plane. These piecewise-constant normals produce piecewise-flat renderings: the surface appears non-smooth and reveals its underlying discretization.
Normals can be computed and stored on vertices, and interpolated in the interior of the triangles to produce smooth renderings (Phong shading). Most techniques for computing per-vertex normals take an average of incident face normals. The main difference between these techniques is their weighting scheme: Uniform weighting is heavily biased by the discretization choice, whereas area-based or angle-based weighting is more forgiving.
The typical half-edge style computation of area-based weights has this structure:
N.setZero(V.rows(),3);
for(int i : vertices)
{
for(face : incident_faces(i))
{
N.row(i) += face.area * face.normal;
}
}
N.rowwise().normalize();
At first glance, it might seem inefficient to loop over incident faces—and thus constructing the per-vertex normals— without using an half-edge data structure. However, per-vertex normals may be throwing each face normal to running sums on its corner vertices:
N.setZero(V.rows(),3);
for(int f = 0; f < F.rows();f++)
{
for(int c = 0; c < 3;c++)
{
N.row(F(f,c)) += area(f) * face_normal.row(f);
}
}
N.rowwise().normalize();
Storing normals per-corner is an efficient and convenient way of supporting both smooth and sharp (e.g. creases and corners) rendering. This format is common to OpenGL and the .obj mesh file format. Often such normals are tuned by the mesh designer, but creases and corners can also be computed automatically. Libigl implements a simple scheme which computes corner normals as averages of normals of faces incident on the corresponding vertex which do not deviate by more than a specified dihedral angle (e.g. 20°).
Normals
example computes per-face (left), per-vertex (middle) and
per-corner (right) normalsGaussian curvature on a continuous surface is defined as the product of the principal curvatures:
\(k_G = k_1 k_2.\)
As an intrinsic measure, it depends on the metric and not the surface’s embedding.
Intuitively, Gaussian curvature tells how locally spherical or elliptic the surface is ( \(k_G>0\) ), how locally saddle-shaped or hyperbolic the surface is ( \(k_G<0\) ), or how locally cylindrical or parabolic ( \(k_G=0\) ) the surface is.
In the discrete setting, one definition for a “discrete Gaussian curvature” on a triangle mesh is via a vertex’s angular deficit:
\(k_G(v_i) = 2π - \sum\limits_{j\in N(i)}θ_{ij},\)
where \(N(i)\) are the triangles incident on vertex \(i\) and \(θ_{ij}\) is the angle at vertex \(i\) in triangle \(j\) [1].
Just like the continuous analog, our discrete Gaussian curvature reveals elliptic, hyperbolic and parabolic vertices on the domain, as demonstrated in Example 202.
GaussianCurvature
example computes discrete Gaussian curvature and
visualizes it in pseudocolor.The two principal curvatures \((k_1,k_2)\) at a point on a surface measure how much the surface bends in different directions. The directions of maximum and minimum (signed) bending are called principal directions and are always orthogonal.
Mean curvature is defined as the average of principal curvatures:
\(H = \frac{1}{2}(k_1 + k_2).\)
One way to extract mean curvature is by examining the Laplace-Beltrami operator applied to the surface positions. The result is a so-called mean-curvature normal:
\(-\Delta \mathbf{x} = H \mathbf{n}.\)
It is easy to compute this on a discrete triangle mesh in libigl using the cotangent Laplace-Beltrami operator [1].
#include <igl/cotmatrix.h>
#include <igl/massmatrix.h>
#include <igl/invert_diag.h>
...
MatrixXd HN;
SparseMatrix<double> L,M,Minv;
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
igl::massmatrix(V,F,igl::MASSMATRIX_TYPE_VORONOI,M);
igl::invert_diag(M,Minv);
HN = -Minv*(L*V);
H = HN.rowwise().norm(); //up to sign
Combined with the angle defect definition of discrete Gaussian curvature, one can define principal curvatures and use least squares fitting to find directions [1].
Alternatively, a robust method for determining principal curvatures is via quadric fitting [2]. In the neighborhood around every vertex, a best-fit quadric is found and principal curvature values and directions are analytically computed on this quadric (Example 203).
CurvatureDirections
example computes principal curvatures via quadric
fitting and visualizes mean curvature in pseudocolor and principal directions
with a cross field.Scalar functions on a surface can be discretized as a piecewise linear function with values defined at each mesh vertex:
\(f(\mathbf{x}) \approx \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \phi_i(\mathbf{x})\, f_i,\)
where \(\phi_i\) is a piecewise linear hat function defined by the mesh so that for each triangle \(\phi_i\) is the linear function which is one only at vertex \(i\) and zero at the other corners.
Thus gradients of such piecewise linear functions are simply sums of gradients of the hat functions:
\(\nabla f(\mathbf{x}) \approx \nabla \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \phi_i(\mathbf{x})\, f_i = \sum\limits_{i=1}^n \nabla \phi_i(\mathbf{x})\, f_i.\)
This reveals that the gradient is a linear function of the vector of \(f_i\) values. Because the \(\phi_i\) are linear in each triangle, their gradients are constant in each triangle. Thus our discrete gradient operator can be written as a matrix multiplication taking vertex values to triangle values:
\(\nabla f \approx \mathbf{G}\,\mathbf{f},\)
where \(\mathbf{f}\) is \(n\times 1\) and \(\mathbf{G}\) is an \(md\times n\) sparse
matrix. This matrix \(\mathbf{G}\) can be derived geometrically, e.g.
[ch. 2, 3].
Libigl’s grad
function computes \(\mathbf{G}\) for
triangle and tetrahedral meshes (Example 204):
Gradient
example computes gradients of an input function on a mesh and
visualizes the vector field.The discrete Laplacian is an essential geometry processing tool. Many interpretations and flavors of the Laplace and Laplace-Beltrami operator exist.
In open Euclidean space, the Laplace operator is the usual divergence of gradient (or equivalently the Laplacian of a function is the trace of its Hessian):
\(\Delta f = \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x^2} + \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial y^2} + \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial z^2}.\)
The Laplace-Beltrami operator generalizes this to surfaces.
When considering piecewise-linear functions on a triangle mesh, a discrete Laplacian may be derived in a variety of ways. The most popular in geometry processing is the so-called ``cotangent Laplacian’’ \(\mathbf{L}\), arising simultaneously from FEM, DEC and applying divergence theorem to vertex one-rings. As a linear operator taking vertex values to vertex values, the Laplacian \(\mathbf{L}\) is a \(n\times n\) matrix with elements:
\(L_{ij} = \begin{cases}j \in N(i) &\cot \alpha_{ij} + \cot \beta_{ij},\\ j \notin N(i) & 0,\\ i = j & -\sum\limits_{k\neq i} L_{ik}, \end{cases}\)
where \(N(i)\) are the vertices adjacent to (neighboring) vertex \(i\), and \(\alpha_{ij},\beta_{ij}\) are the angles opposite to edge \({ij}\). This formula leads to a typical half-edge style implementation for constructing \(\mathbf{L}\):
for(int i : vertices)
{
for(int j : one_ring(i))
{
for(int k : triangle_on_edge(i,j))
{
L(i,j) = cot(angle(i,j,k));
L(i,i) -= cot(angle(i,j,k));
}
}
}
Similarly as before, it may seem to loop over one-rings without having an half-edge data structure. However, this is not the case, since the Laplacian may be built by summing together contributions for each triangle, much in spirit with its FEM discretization of the Dirichlet energy (sum of squared gradients):
for(triangle t : triangles)
{
for(edge i,j : t)
{
L(i,j) += cot(angle(i,j,k));
L(j,i) += cot(angle(i,j,k));
L(i,i) -= cot(angle(i,j,k));
L(j,j) -= cot(angle(i,j,k));
}
}
Libigl implements discrete “cotangent” Laplacians for triangles meshes and tetrahedral meshes, building both with fast geometric rules rather than “by the book” FEM construction which involves many (small) matrix inversions, cf. [4].
The operator applied to mesh vertex positions amounts to smoothing by flowing the surface along the mean curvature normal direction (Example 205). Note that this is equivalent to minimizing surface area.
Laplacian
example computes conformalized mean curvature flow using the
cotangent Laplacian [5] .The mass matrix \(\mathbf{M}\) is another \(n \times n\) matrix which takes vertex values to vertex values. From an FEM point of view, it is a discretization of the inner-product: it accounts for the area around each vertex. Consequently, \(\mathbf{M}\) is often a diagonal matrix, such that \(M_{ii}\) is the barycentric or voronoi area around vertex \(i\) in the mesh [1]. The inverse of this matrix is also very useful as it transforms integrated quantities into point-wise quantities, e.g.:
\(\Delta f \approx \mathbf{M}^{-1} \mathbf{L} \mathbf{f}.\)
In general, when encountering squared quantities integrated over the surface, the mass matrix will be used as the discretization of the inner product when sampling function values at vertices:
\(\int_S x\, y\ dA \approx \mathbf{x}^T\mathbf{M}\,\mathbf{y}.\)
An alternative mass matrix \(\mathbf{T}\) is a \(md \times md\) matrix which takes triangle vector values to triangle vector values. This matrix represents an inner-product accounting for the area associated with each triangle (i.e. the triangles true area).
An alternative construction of the discrete cotangent Laplacian is by “squaring” the discrete gradient operator. This may be derived by applying Green’s identity (ignoring boundary conditions for the moment):
\(\int_S \|\nabla f\|^2 dA = \int_S f \Delta f dA\)
Or in matrix form which is immediately translatable to code:
\(\mathbf{f}^T \mathbf{G}^T \mathbf{T} \mathbf{G} \mathbf{f} = \mathbf{f}^T \mathbf{M} \mathbf{M}^{-1} \mathbf{L} \mathbf{f} = \mathbf{f}^T \mathbf{L} \mathbf{f}.\)
So we have that \(\mathbf{L} = \mathbf{G}^T \mathbf{T} \mathbf{G}\). This also hints that we may consider \(\mathbf{G}^T\) as a discrete divergence operator, since the Laplacian is the divergence of the gradient. Naturally, \(\mathbf{G}^T\) is a \(n \times md\) sparse matrix which takes vector values stored at triangle faces to scalar divergence values at vertices.
Libigl relies heavily on the Eigen library for dense and sparse linear algebra routines. Besides geometry processing routines, libigl has linear algebra routines which bootstrap Eigen and make it feel even more similar to a high-level algebra library such as Matlab.
A very familiar and powerful routine in Matlab is array slicing. This allows reading from or writing to a possibly non-contiguous sub-matrix. Let’s consider the Matlab code:
B = A(R,C);
If A
is a \(m \times n\) matrix and R
is a \(j\)-long list of row-indices
(between 1 and \(m\)) and C
is a \(k\)-long list of column-indices, then as a
result B
will be a \(j \times k\) matrix drawing elements from A
according to
R
and C
. In libigl, the same functionality is provided by the slice
function (Example 301):
VectorXi R,C;
MatrixXd A,B;
...
igl::slice(A,R,C,B);
Note that A
and B
could also be sparse matrices.
Similarly, consider the Matlab code:
A(R,C) = B;
Now, the selection is on the left-hand side so the \(j \times k\) matrix B
is
being written into the submatrix of A
determined by R
and C
. This
functionality is provided in libigl using slice_into
:
igl::slice_into(B,R,C,A);
Slice
shows how to use igl::slice
to change the colors for
triangles on a mesh.Matlab and other higher-level languages make it very easy to extract indices of sorting and comparison routines. For example in Matlab, one can write:
[Y,I] = sort(X,1,'ascend');
so if X
is a \(m \times n\) matrix then Y
will also be an \(m \times n\) matrix
with entries sorted along dimension 1
in 'ascend'
ing order. The second
output I
is a \(m \times n\) matrix of indices such that Y(i,j) =
X(I(i,j),j);
. That is, I
reveals how X
is sorted into Y
.
This same functionality is supported in libigl:
igl::sort(X,1,true,Y,I);
Similarly, sorting entire rows can be accomplished in Matlab using:
[Y,I] = sortrows(X,'ascend');
where now I
is a \(m\) vector of indices such that Y = X(I,:)
.
In libigl, this is supported with
igl::sortrows(X,true,Y,I);
where again I
reveals the index of sort so that it can be reproduced with
igl::slice(X,I,1,Y)
.
Analogous functions are available in libigl for: max
, min
, and unique
.
Sort
shows how to use igl::sortrows
to
pseudocolor triangles according to their barycenters’ sorted
order (Example 302).Libigl implements a variety of other routines with the same api and functionality as common Matlab functions.
Name | Description |
---|---|
igl::any_of |
Whether any elements are non-zero (true) |
igl::cat |
Concatenate two matrices (especially useful for dealing with Eigen sparse matrices) |
igl::ceil |
Round entries up to nearest integer |
igl::cumsum |
Cumulative sum of matrix elements |
igl::colon |
Act like Matlab’s : , similar to Eigen’s LinSpaced |
igl::cross |
Cross product per-row |
igl::dot |
dot product per-row |
igl::find |
Find subscripts of non-zero entries |
igl::floot |
Round entries down to nearest integer |
igl::histc |
Counting occurrences for building a histogram |
igl::hsv_to_rgb |
Convert HSV colors to RGB (cf. Matlab’s hsv2rgb ) |
igl::intersect |
Set intersection of matrix elements. |
igl::jet |
Quantized colors along the rainbow. |
igl::kronecker_product |
Compare to Matlab’s kronprod |
igl::median |
Compute the median per column |
igl::mode |
Compute the mode per column |
igl::orth |
Orthogonalization of a basis |
igl::setdiff |
Set difference of matrix elements |
igl::speye |
Identity as sparse matrix |
A common linear system in geometry processing is the Laplace equation:
\(∆z = 0\)
subject to some boundary conditions, for example Dirichlet boundary conditions (fixed value):
\(\left.z\right|_{\partial{S}} = z_{bc}\)
In the discrete setting, the linear system can be written as:
\(\mathbf{L} \mathbf{z} = \mathbf{0}\)
where \(\mathbf{L}\) is the \(n \times n\) discrete Laplacian and \(\mathbf{z}\) is a vector of per-vertex values. Most of \(\mathbf{z}\) correspond to interior vertices and are unknown, but some of \(\mathbf{z}\) represent values at boundary vertices. Their values are known so we may move their corresponding terms to the right-hand side.
Conceptually, this is very easy if we have sorted \(\mathbf{z}\) so that interior vertices come first and then boundary vertices:
\[\left(\begin{array}{cc} \mathbf{L}_{in,in} & \mathbf{L}_{in,b}\\ \mathbf{L}_{b,in} & \mathbf{L}_{b,b}\end{array}\right) \left(\begin{array}{c} \mathbf{z}_{in}\\ \mathbf{z}_{b}\end{array}\right) = \left(\begin{array}{c} \mathbf{0}_{in}\\ \mathbf{z}_{bc}\end{array}\right)\]
The bottom block of equations is no longer meaningful so we’ll only consider the top block:
\[\left(\begin{array}{cc} \mathbf{L}_{in,in} & \mathbf{L}_{in,b}\end{array}\right) \left(\begin{array}{c} \mathbf{z}_{in}\\ \mathbf{z}_{b}\end{array}\right) = \mathbf{0}_{in}\]
We can move the known values to the right-hand side:
\[\mathbf{L}_{in,in} \mathbf{z}_{in} = - \mathbf{L}_{in,b} \mathbf{z}_{b}\]
Finally we can solve this equation for the unknown values at interior vertices \(\mathbf{z}_{in}\).
However, our vertices will often not be sorted in this way. One option would be to sort V
,
then proceed as above and then unsort the solution Z
to match V
. However,
this solution is not very general.
With array slicing no explicit sort is needed. Instead we can slice-out
submatrix blocks (\(\mathbf{L}_{in,in}\), \(\mathbf{L}_{in,b}\), etc.) and follow
the linear algebra above directly. Then we can slice the solution into the
rows of Z
corresponding to the interior vertices (Example 303).
LaplaceEquation
example solves a Laplace equation with Dirichlet
boundary conditions.The same Laplace equation may be equivalently derived by minimizing Dirichlet energy subject to the same boundary conditions:
\(\mathop{\text{minimize }}_z \frac{1}{2}\int\limits_S \|\nabla z\|^2 dA\)
On our discrete mesh, recall that this becomes
\(\mathop{\text{minimize }}_\mathbf{z} \frac{1}{2}\mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{G}^T \mathbf{D} \mathbf{G} \mathbf{z} \rightarrow \mathop{\text{minimize }}_\mathbf{z} \mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{L} \mathbf{z}\)
The general problem of minimizing some energy over a mesh subject to fixed value boundary conditions is so wide spread that libigl has a dedicated api for solving such systems.
Let us consider a general quadratic minimization problem subject to different common constraints:
\[\mathop{\text{minimize }}_\mathbf{z} \frac{1}{2}\mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{Q} \mathbf{z} + \mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{B} + \text{constant},\]
subject to
\[\mathbf{z}_b = \mathbf{z}_{bc} \text{ and } \mathbf{A}_{eq} \mathbf{z} = \mathbf{B}_{eq},\]
where
This specification is overly general as we could write \(\mathbf{z}_b = \mathbf{z}_{bc}\) as rows of \(\mathbf{A}_{eq} \mathbf{z} = \mathbf{B}_{eq}\), but these fixed value constraints appear so often that they merit a dedicated place in the API.
In libigl, solving such quadratic optimization problems is split into two routines: precomputation and solve. Precomputation only depends on the quadratic coefficients, known value indices and linear constraint coefficients:
igl::min_quad_with_fixed_data mqwf;
igl::min_quad_with_fixed_precompute(Q,b,Aeq,true,mqwf);
The output is a struct mqwf
which contains the system matrix factorization
and is used during solving with arbitrary linear terms, known values, and
constraint in the right-hand sides:
igl::min_quad_with_fixed_solve(mqwf,B,bc,Beq,Z);
The output Z
is a \(n \times 1\) vector of solutions with fixed values
correctly placed to match the mesh vertices V
.
We saw above that min_quad_with_fixed_*
in libigl provides a compact way to
solve general quadratic programs. Let’s consider another example, this time
with active linear equality constraints. Specifically let’s solve the
bi-Laplace equation
or equivalently minimize the Laplace energy:
\[\Delta^2 z = 0 \leftrightarrow \mathop{\text{minimize }}\limits_z \frac{1}{2} \int\limits_S (\Delta z)^2 dA\]
subject to fixed value constraints and a linear equality constraint:
\(z_{a} = 1, z_{b} = -1\) and \(z_{c} = z_{d}\).
Notice that we can rewrite the last constraint in the familiar form from above:
\(z_{c} - z_{d} = 0.\)
Now we can assembly Aeq
as a \(1 \times n\) sparse matrix with a coefficient
\(1\) in the column corresponding to vertex \(c\) and a \(-1\) at \(d\). The right-hand
side Beq
is simply zero.
Internally, min_quad_with_fixed_*
solves using the Lagrange Multiplier
method. This method adds additional variables for each linear constraint (in
general a \(m \times 1\) vector of variables \(\lambda\)) and then solves the
saddle problem:
\[\mathop{\text{find saddle }}_{\mathbf{z},\lambda}\, \frac{1}{2}\mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{Q} \mathbf{z} + \mathbf{z}^T \mathbf{B} + \text{constant} + \lambda^T\left(\mathbf{A}_{eq} \mathbf{z} - \mathbf{B}_{eq}\right)\]
This can be rewritten in a more familiar form by stacking \(\mathbf{z}\) and \(\lambda\) into one \((m+n) \times 1\) vector of unknowns:
\[\mathop{\text{find saddle }}_{\mathbf{z},\lambda}\, \frac{1}{2} \left( \mathbf{z}^T \lambda^T \right) \left( \begin{array}{cc} \mathbf{Q} & \mathbf{A}_{eq}^T\\ \mathbf{A}_{eq} & 0 \end{array} \right) \left( \begin{array}{c} \mathbf{z}\\ \lambda \end{array} \right) + \left( \mathbf{z}^T \lambda^T \right) \left( \begin{array}{c} \mathbf{B}\\ -\mathbf{B}_{eq} \end{array} \right) + \text{constant}\]
Differentiating with respect to \(\left( \mathbf{z}^T \lambda^T \right)\) reveals
a linear system and we can solve for \(\mathbf{z}\) and \(\lambda\). The only
difference from the straight quadratic minimization system, is that this
saddle problem system will not be positive definite. Thus, we must use a
different factorization technique (LDLT rather than LLT): libigl’s
min_quad_with_fixed_precompute
automatically chooses the correct solver in
the presence of linear equality constraints (Example 304).
LinearEqualityConstraints
first solves with just fixed value
constraints (left: 1 and –1 on the left hand and foot respectively), then
solves with an additional linear equality constraint (right: points on right
hand and foot constrained to be equal).We can generalize the quadratic optimization in the previous section even more by allowing inequality constraints. Specifically box constraints (lower and upper bounds):
\(\mathbf{l} \le \mathbf{z} \le \mathbf{u},\)
where \(\mathbf{l},\mathbf{u}\) are \(n \times 1\) vectors of lower and upper bounds and general linear inequality constraints:
\(\mathbf{A}_{ieq} \mathbf{z} \le \mathbf{B}_{ieq},\)
where \(\mathbf{A}_{ieq}\) is a \(k \times n\) matrix of linear coefficients and \(\mathbf{B}_{ieq}\) is a \(k \times 1\) matrix of constraint right-hand sides.
Again, we are overly general as the box constraints could be written as rows of the linear inequality constraints, but bounds appear frequently enough to merit a dedicated api.
Libigl implements its own active set routine for solving quadratric programs (QPs). This algorithm works by iteratively “activating” violated inequality constraints by enforcing them as equalities and “deactivating” constraints which are no longer needed.
After deciding which constraints are active at each iteration, the problem reduces to a quadratic minimization subject to linear equality constraints, and the method from the previous section is invoked. This is repeated until convergence.
Currently the implementation is efficient for box constraints and sparse non-overlapping linear inequality constraints.
Unlike alternative interior-point methods, the active set method benefits from a warm-start (initial guess for the solution vector \(\mathbf{z}\)).
igl::active_set_params as;
// Z is optional initial guess and output
igl::active_set(Q,B,b,bc,Aeq,Beq,Aieq,Bieq,lx,ux,as,Z);
Modern mesh-based shape deformation methods satisfy user deformation constraints at handles (selected vertices or regions on the mesh) and propagate these handle deformations to the rest of shape smoothly and without removing or distorting details. Libigl provides implementations of a variety of state-of-the-art deformation techniques, ranging from quadratic mesh-based energy minimizers, to skinning methods, to non-linear elasticity-inspired techniques.
The period of research between 2000 and 2010 produced a collection of techniques that cast the problem of handle-based shape deformation as a quadratic energy minimization problem or equivalently the solution to a linear partial differential equation.
There are many flavors of these techniques, but a prototypical subset are those that consider solutions to the bi-Laplace equation, that is a biharmonic function [7]. This fourth-order PDE provides sufficient flexibility in boundary conditions to ensure \(C^1\) continuity at handle constraints (in the limit under refinement) [8].
Let us first begin our discussion of biharmonic deformation, by considering biharmonic surfaces. We will casually define biharmonic surfaces as surface whose position functions are biharmonic with respect to some initial parameterization:
\(\Delta^2 \mathbf{x}' = 0\)
and subject to some handle constraints, conceptualized as “boundary conditions”:
\(\mathbf{x}'_{b} = \mathbf{x}_{bc}.\)
where \(\mathbf{x}'\) is the unknown 3D position of a point on the surface. So we are asking that the bi-Laplacian of each of spatial coordinate function to be zero.
In libigl, one can solve a biharmonic problem with igl::harmonic
and setting \(k=2\) (bi-harmonic):
// U_bc contains deformation of boundary vertices b
igl::harmonic(V,F,b,U_bc,2,U);
This produces a smooth surface that interpolates the handle constraints, but all original details on the surface will be smoothed away. Most obviously, if the original surface is not already biharmonic, then giving all handles the identity deformation (keeping them at their rest positions) will not reproduce the original surface. Rather, the result will be the biharmonic surface that does interpolate those handle positions.
Thus, we may conclude that this is not an intuitive technique for shape deformation.
Now we know that one useful property for a deformation technique is “rest pose reproduction”: applying no deformation to the handles should apply no deformation to the shape.
To guarantee this by construction we can work with deformation fields (ie. displacements) \(\mathbf{d}\) rather than directly with positions \(\mathbf{x}\). Then the deformed positions can be recovered as
\(\mathbf{x}' = \mathbf{x}+\mathbf{d}.\)
A smooth deformation field \(\mathbf{d}\) which interpolates the deformation fields of the handle constraints will impose a smooth deformed shape \(\mathbf{x}'\). Naturally, we consider biharmonic deformation fields:
\(\Delta^2 \mathbf{d} = 0\)
subject to the same handle constraints, but rewritten in terms of their implied deformation field at the boundary (handles):
\(\mathbf{d}_b = \mathbf{x}_{bc} - \mathbf{x}_b.\)
Again we can use igl::harmonic
with \(k=2\), but this time solve for the
deformation field and then recover the deformed positions:
// U_bc contains deformation of boundary vertices b
D_bc = U_bc - igl::slice(V,b,1);
igl::harmonic(V,F,b,D_bc,2,D);
U = V+D;
Biharmonic functions (whether positions or displacements) are solutions to the bi-Laplace equation, but also minimizers of the “Laplacian energy”. For example, for displacements \(\mathbf{d}\), the energy reads
\(\int\limits_S \|\Delta \mathbf{d}\|^2 dA,\)
where we define \(\Delta \mathbf{d}\) to simply apply the Laplacian coordinate-wise.
By linearity of the Laplace(-Beltrami) operator we can reexpress this energy in terms of the original positions \(\mathbf{x}\) and the unknown positions \(\mathbf{x}' = \mathbf{x} - \mathbf{d}\):
\(\int\limits_S \|\Delta (\mathbf{x}' - \mathbf{x})\|^2 dA = \int\limits_S \|\Delta \mathbf{x}' - \Delta \mathbf{x})\|^2 dA.\)
In the early work of Sorkine et al., the quantities \(\Delta \mathbf{x}'\) and \(\Delta \mathbf{x}\) were dubbed “differential coordinates” [9]. Their deformations (without linearized rotations) is thus equivalent to biharmonic deformation fields.
We can generalize biharmonic deformation by considering different powers of the Laplacian, resulting in a series of PDEs of the form:
\(\Delta^k \mathbf{d} = 0.\)
with \(k\in{1,2,3,\dots}\). The choice of \(k\) determines the level of continuity at the handles. In particular, \(k=1\) implies \(C^0\) at the boundary, \(k=2\) implies \(C^1\), \(k=3\) implies \(C^2\) and in general \(k\) implies \(C^{k-1}\).
int k = 2;// or 1,3,4,...
igl::harmonic(V,F,b,bc,k,Z);
In computer animation, shape deformation is often referred to as “skinning”. Constraints are posed as relative rotations of internal rigid “bones” inside a character. The deformation method, or skinning method, determines how the surface of the character (i.e. its skin) should move as a function of the bone rotations.
The most popular technique is linear blend skinning. Each point on the shape computes its new location as a linear combination of bone transformations:
\(\mathbf{x}' = \sum\limits_{i = 1}^m w_i(\mathbf{x}) \mathbf{T}_i \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathbf{x}_i\\1\end{array}\right),\)
where \(w_i(\mathbf{x})\) is the scalar weight function of the ith bone evaluated at \(\mathbf{x}\) and \(\mathbf{T}_i\) is the bone transformation as a \(4 \times 3\) matrix.
This formula is embarassingly parallel (computation at one point does not depend on shared data need by computation at another point). It is often implemented as a vertex shader. The weights and rest positions for each vertex are sent as vertex shader attributes and bone transformations are sent as uniforms. Then vertices are transformed within the vertex shader, just in time for rendering.
As the skinning formula is linear (hence its name), we can write it as matrix multiplication:
\(\mathbf{X}' = \mathbf{M} \mathbf{T},\)
where \(\mathbf{X}'\) is \(n \times 3\) stack of deformed positions as row vectors, \(\mathbf{M}\) is a \(n \times m\cdot dim\) matrix containing weights and rest positions and \(\mathbf{T}\) is a \(m\cdot (dim+1) \times dim\) stack of transposed bone transformations.
Traditionally, the weight functions \(w_j\) are painted manually by skilled rigging professionals. Modern techniques now exist to compute weight functions automatically given the shape and a description of the skeleton (or in general any handle structure such as a cage, collection of points, selected regions, etc.).
Bounded biharmonic weights are one such technique that casts weight computation as a constrained optimization problem [10]. The weights enforce smoothness by minimizing the familiar Laplacian energy:
\(\sum\limits_{i = 1}^m \int_S (\Delta w_i)^2 dA\)
subject to constraints which enforce interpolation of handle constraints:
\(w_i(\mathbf{x}) = \begin{cases} 1 & \text{ if } \mathbf{x} \in H_i\\ 0 & \text{ otherwise } \end{cases},\)
where \(H_i\) is the ith handle, and constraints which enforce non-negativity, parition of unity and encourage sparsity:
\(0\le w_i \le 1\) and \(\sum\limits_{i=1}^m w_i = 1.\)
This is a quadratic programming problem and libigl solves it using its active set solver or by calling out to Mosek.
Even with high quality weights, linear blend skinning is limited. In particular, it suffers from known artifacts stemming from blending rotations as as matrices: a weight combination of rotation matrices is not necessarily a rotation. Consider an equal blend between rotating by \(-\pi/2\) and by \(\pi/2\) about the \(z\)-axis. Intuitively one might expect to get the identity matrix, but instead the blend is a degenerate matrix scaling the \(x\) and \(y\) coordinates by zero:
\(0.5\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0&-1&0\\1&0&0\\0&0&1\end{array}\right)+ 0.5\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0&1&0\\-1&0&0\\0&0&1\end{array}\right)= \left(\begin{array}{ccc}0&0&0\\0&0&0\\0&0&1\end{array}\right)\)
In practice, this means the shape shrinks and collapses in regions where bone weights overlap: near joints.
Dual quaternion skinning presents a solution [11]. This method represents rigid transformations as a pair of unit quaternions, \(\hat{\mathbf{q}}\). The linear blend skinning formula is replaced with a linear blend of dual quaternions:
\(\mathbf{x}' = \cfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^m w_i(\mathbf{x})\hat{\mathbf{q}_i}} {\left\|\sum\limits_{i=1}^m w_i(\mathbf{x})\hat{\mathbf{q}_i}\right\|} \mathbf{x},\)
where \(\hat{\mathbf{q}_i}\) is the dual quaternion representation of the rigid transformation of bone \(i\). The normalization forces the result of the linear blending to again be a unit dual quaternion and thus also a rigid transformation.
Like linear blend skinning, dual quaternion skinning is best performed in the
vertex shader. The only difference being that bone transformations are sent as
dual quaternions rather than affine transformation matrices. Libigl supports
CPU-side dual quaternion skinning with the igl::dqs
function, which takes a
more traditional representation of rigid transformations as input and
internally converts to the dual quaternion representation before blending:
// vQ is a list of rotations as quaternions
// vT is a list of translations
igl::dqs(V,W,vQ,vT,U);
Skinning and other linear methods for deformation are inherently limited. Difficult arises especially when large rotations are imposed by the handle constraints.
In the context of energy-minimization approaches, the problem stems from comparing positions (our displacements) in the coordinate frame of the undeformed shape. These quadratic energies are at best invariant to global rotations of the entire shape, but not smoothly varying local rotations. Thus linear techniques will not produce non-trivial bending and twisting.
Furthermore, when considering solid shapes (e.g. discretized with tetrahedral meshes) linear methods struggle to maintain local volume, and they often suffer from shrinking and bulging artifacts.
Non-linear deformation techniques present a solution to these problems. They work by comparing the deformation of a mesh vertex to its rest position rotated to a new coordinate frame which best matches the deformation. The non-linearity stems from the mutual dependence of the deformation and the best-fit rotation. These techniques are often labeled “as-rigid-as-possible” as they penalize the sum of all local deformations’ deviations from rotations.
To arrive at such an energy, let’s consider a simple per-triangle energy:
\(E_\text{linear}(\mathbf{X}') = \sum\limits_{t \in T} a_t \sum\limits_{\{i,j\} \in t} w_{ij} \left\| \left(\mathbf{x}'_i - \mathbf{x}'_j\right) - \left(\mathbf{x}_i - \mathbf{x}_j\right)\right\|^2\)
where \(\mathbf{X}'\) are the mesh’s unknown deformed vertex positions, \(t\) is a triangle in a list of triangles \(T\), \(a_t\) is the area of triangle \(t\) and \(\{i,j\}\) is an edge in triangle \(t\). Thus, this energy measures the norm of change between an edge vector in the original mesh \(\left(\mathbf{x}_i - \mathbf{x}_j\right)\) and the unknown mesh \(\left(\mathbf{x}'_i - \mathbf{x}'_j\right)\).
This energy is not rotation invariant. If we rotate the mesh by 90 degrees the change in edge vectors not aligned with the axis of rotation will be large, despite the overall deformation being perfectly rigid.
So, the “as-rigid-as-possible” solution is to append auxiliary variables \(\mathbf{R}_t\) for each triangle \(t\) which are constrained to be rotations. Then the energy is rewritten, this time comparing deformed edge vectors to their rotated rest counterparts:
\(E_\text{arap}(\mathbf{X}',\{\mathbf{R}_1,\dots,\mathbf{R}_{|T|}\}) = \sum\limits_{t \in T} a_t \sum\limits_{\{i,j\} \in t} w_{ij} \left\| \left(\mathbf{x}'_i - \mathbf{x}'_j\right)- \mathbf{R}_t\left(\mathbf{x}_i - \mathbf{x}_j\right)\right\|^2.\)
The separation into the primary vertex position variables \(\mathbf{X}'\) and the rotations \(\{\mathbf{R}_1,\dots,\mathbf{R}_{|T|}\}\) lead to strategy for optimization, too. If the rotations \(\{\mathbf{R}_1,\dots,\mathbf{R}_{|T|}\}\) are held fixed then the energy is quadratic in the remaining variables \(\mathbf{X}'\) and can be optimized by solving a (sparse) global linear system. Alternatively, if \(\mathbf{X}'\) are held fixed then each rotation is the solution to a localized Procrustes problem (found via \(3 \times 3\) SVD or polar decompostion). These two steps—local and global—each weakly decrease the energy, thus we may safely iterate them until convergence.
The different flavors of “as-rigid-as-possible” depend on the dimension and codimension of the domain and the edge-sets \(T\). The proposed surface manipulation technique by Sorkine and Alexa [12], considers \(T\) to be the set of sets of edges emanating from each vertex (spokes). Later, Chao et al. derived the relationship between “as-rigid-as-possible” mesh energies and co-rotational elasticity considering 0-codimension elements as edge-sets: triangles in 2D and tetrahedra in 3D [13]. They also showed how Sorkine and Alexa’s edge-sets are not a discretization of a continuous energy, proposing instead edge-sets for surfaces containing all edges of elements incident on a vertex (spokes and rims). They show that this amounts to measuring bending, albeit in a discretization-dependent way.
Libigl, supports these common flavors. Selecting one is a matter of setting the energy type before the precompuation phase:
igl::ARAPData data;
arap_data.energy = igl::ARAP_ENERGY_TYPE_SPOKES;
//arap_data.energy = igl::ARAP_ENERGY_TYPE_SPOKES_AND_RIMS;
//arap_data.energy = igl::ARAP_ENERGY_TYPE_ELEMENTS; //triangles or tets
igl::arap_precomputation(V,F,dim,b,data);
Just like igl::min_quad_with_fixed_*
, this precomputation phase only depends
on the mesh, fixed vertex indices b
and the energy parameters. To solve with
certain constraints on the positions of vertices in b
, we may call:
igl::arap_solve(bc,data,U);
which uses U
as an initial guess and then computes the solution into it.
Libigl’s implementation of as-rigid-as-possible deformation takes advantage of the highly optimized singular value decomposition code from McAdams et al. [14] which leverages SSE intrinsics.
The concept of local rigidity will be revisited shortly in the context of surface parameterization.
Non-linear optimization is, unsurprisingly, slower than its linear cousins. In the case of the as-rigid-as-possible optimization, the bottleneck is typically the large number of polar decompositions necessary to recover best fit rotations for each edge-set (i.e. for each triangle, tetrahedron, or vertex cell). Even if this code is optimized, the number of primary degrees of freedom is tied to the discretization level, despite the deformations’ low frequency behavior.
This invites two routes toward fast non-linear optimization. First, is it necessary (or even advantageous) to find so many best-fit rotations? Second, can we reduce the degrees of freedom to better reflect the frequency of the desired deformations.
Taken in turn, these optimizations culminate in a method which optimizes over the space of linear blend skinning deformations spanned by high-quality weights (i.e. manually painted ones or bounded biharmonic weights). This space is a low-dimensional subspace of all possible mesh deformations, captured by writing linear blend skinning in matrix form:
\(\mathbf{X}' = \mathbf{M}\mathbf{T}\)
where the mesh vertex positions in the \(n \times 3\) matrix \(\mathbf{X}'\) are replaced by a linear combination of a small number of degrees of freedom in the \((3+1)m \times 3\) stack of transposed “handle” transformations. Swapping in \(\mathbf{M}\mathbf{T}\) for \(\mathbf{X}'\) in the ARAP energies above immediately sees performance gains during the global solve step as \(m << n\).
The complexity of the local step—fitting rotations—is still bound to the original mesh discretization. However, if the skinning is well behaved, we can make the assumption that places on the shape with similar skinning weights will deform similarly and thus imply similar best-fit rotations. Therefore, we cluster edge-sets according to their representation in weight-space: where a vertex \(\mathbf{x}\) takes the coordinates \([w_1(\mathbf{x}),w_2(\mathbf{x}),\dots,w_m(\mathbf{x})]\). The number of clustered edge-sets show diminishing returns on the deformation quality so we may choose a small number of clusters, proportional to the number of skinning weight functions (rather than the number of discrete mesh vertices).
This proposed deformation model [15], can simultaneously be seen as a fast, subspace optimization for ARAP and as an automatic method for finding the best skinning transformation degrees of freedom.
A variety of user interfaces are supported via linear equality constraints on the skinning transformations associated with handles. To fix a transformation entirely we simply add the constraint:
\(\left(\begin{array}{cccc} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & 1 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & 1 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1\end{array}\right) \mathbf{T}_i^T = \hat{\mathbf{T}}_i^T,\)
where \(\hat{\mathbf{T}}_i^T\) is the \((3+1) \times 3\) transposed fixed transformation for handle \(i\).
To fix only the origin of a handle, we add a constraint requiring the transformation to interpolate a point in space (typically the centroid of all points with \(w_i = 1\):
\(\mathbf{c}'^T\mathbf{T}_i^T = \mathbf{c}^T,\)
where \(\mathbf{c}^T\) is the \(1 \times (3+1)\) position of the point at rest in transposed homogeneous coordinates, and \(\mathbf{c}'^T\) the point given by the user.
We can similarly fix just the linear part of the transformation at a handle, freeing the translation component (producing a “chickenhead” effect):
\(\left(\begin{array}{cccc} 1&0&0&0\\ 0&1&0&0\\ 0&0&1&0\end{array}\right) \mathbf{T}_i^T = \hat{\mathbf{L}}_i^T,\)
where \(\hat{\mathbf{L}}_i^T\) is the fixed \(3 \times 3\) linear part of the transformation at handle \(i\).
And lastly we can allow the user to entirely free the transformation’s degrees of freedom, delegating the optimization to find the best possible values for all elements. To do this, we simply abstain from adding a corresponding constraint.
Being a subspace method, an immediate disadvantage is the reduced degrees of freedom. This brings performance, but in some situations limits behavior too much. In such cases one can use the skinning subspace to build an effective clustering of rotation edge-sets for a traditional ARAP optimization: forgoing the subspace substitution. This has an two-fold effect. The cost of the rotation fitting, local step drastically reduces, and the deformations are “regularized” according the clusters. From a high level point of view, if the clusters are derived from skinning weights, then they will discourage bending, especially along isolines of the weight functions.
In this light, we can think of the “spokes+rims” style surface ARAP as a (slight and redundant) clustering of the per-triangle edge-sets.
In computer graphics, we denote as surface parametrization a map from the surface to \(\mathbf{R}^2\). It is usually encoded by a new set of 2D coordinates for each vertex of the mesh (and possibly also by a new set of faces in one to one correspondence with the faces of the original surface). Note that this definition is the inverse of the classical differential geometry definition.
A parametrization has many applications, ranging from texture mapping to surface remeshing. Many algorithms have been proposed, and they can be broadly divided in four families:
Single patch, fixed boundary: these algorithm can parametrize a disk-like part of the surface given fixed 2D positions for its boundary. These algorithms are efficient and simple, but they usually produce high-distortion maps due to the fixed boundary.
Single patch, free boundary: these algorithms let the boundary deform freely, greatly reducing the map distortion. Care should be taken to prevent the border to self-intersect.
Global parametrization: these algorithms work on meshes with arbitrary genus. They initially cut the mesh in multiple patches that can be separately parametrized. The generated maps are discontinuous on the cuts (often referred as seams).
Global seamless parametrization: these are global parametrization algorithm that hides the seams, making the parametrization “continuous”, under specific assumptions that we will discuss later.
Harmonic parametrization [16] is a single patch, fixed boundary parametrization algorithm that computes the 2D coordinates of the flattened mesh as two harmonic functions.
The algorithm is divided in 3 steps:
The algorithm can be coded using libigl as follows:
Eigen::VectorXi bnd;
igl::boundary_loop(V,F,bnd);
Eigen::MatrixXd bnd_uv;
igl::map_vertices_to_circle(V,bnd,bnd_uv);
igl::harmonic(V,F,bnd,bnd_uv,1,V_uv);
where bnd
contains the indices of the boundary vertices, bnd_uv their position on the UV plane, and “1” denotes that we want to compute an harmonic function (2 will be for biharmonic, 3 for triharmonic, etc.). Note that each of the three
functions is designed to be reusable in other parametrization algorithms.
A UV parametrization can be visualized in the viewer with:
viewer.data.set_uv(V_uv);
The UV coordinates are then used to apply a procedural checkerboard texture to the mesh (Example 501).
Least squares conformal maps parametrization [17] minimizes the conformal (angular) distortion of the parametrization. Differently from harmonic parametrization, it does not need to have a fixed boundary.
LSCM minimizes the following energy:
\[ E_{LSCM}(\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}) = \int_X \frac{1}{2}| \nabla \mathbf{u}^{\perp} - \nabla \mathbf{v} |^2 dA \]
which can be rewritten in matrix form as [18]:
\[ E_{LSCM}(\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}) = \frac{1}{2} [\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}]^t (L_c - 2A) [\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}] \]
where \(L_c\) is the cotangent Laplacian matrix and A is a matrix such that \( [\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}]^t A [\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}]$ is equal to the vector area of the mesh.
Using libigl, this matrix energy can be written in a few lines of codes. The
cotangent matrix can be computed using igl::cotmatrix
:
SparseMatrix<double> L;
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
Note that we want to apply the Laplacian matrix to the u and v coordinates at the same time, thus we need to extend it taking the left Kronecker product with a 2x2 identity matrix:
SparseMatrix<double> L_flat;
igl::repdiag(L,2,L_flat);
The area matrix is computed with igl::vector_area_matrix
:
SparseMatrix<double> A;
igl::vector_area_matrix(F,A);
The final energy matrix is the sum of these two matrices. Note that in this case we do not need to fix the boundary. To remove the null space of the energy and make the minimum unique, it is sufficient to fix two arbitrary vertices to two arbitrary positions. The full source code is provided in Example 502.
As-rigid-as-possible parametrization [19] is a powerful single-patch, non-linear algorithm to compute a parametrization that strives to preserve distances (and thus angles). The idea is very similar to ARAP surface deformation: each triangle is mapped to the plane trying to preserve its original shape, up to a rigid rotation.
The algorithm can be implemented reusing the functions discussed in the
deformation chapter: igl::arap_precomputation
and igl::arap_solve
. The only
difference is that the optimization has to be done in 2D instead of 3D and that
we need to compute a starting point. While for 3D deformation the optimization
is bootstrapped with the original mesh, this is not the case for ARAP
parametrization since the starting point must be a 2D mesh. In Example
503, we initialize the optimization with harmonic
parametrization. Similarly to LSCM, the boundary is free to deform to minimize
the distortion.
The design of tangent fields is a basic tool used to design guidance fields for uniform quadrilateral and hexahedral remeshing. Libigl contains an implementation of all the state-of-the-art algorithms to design N-RoSy fields and their generalizations.
In libigl, tangent unit-length vector fields are piece-wise constant on the faces of a triangle mesh, and they are described by one or more vectors per-face. The function
igl::nrosy(V,F,b,bc,b_soft,b_soft_weight,bc_soft,N,0.5,
output_field,output_singularities);
creates a smooth unit-length vector field (N=1) starting from a sparse set of constrained faces, whose indices are listed in b and their constrained value is specified in bc. The functions supports soft_constraints (b_soft, b_soft_weight, bc_soft), and returns the interpolated field for each face of the triangle mesh (output_field), plus the singularities of the field (output_singularities).
The singularities are vertices where the field vanishes (highlighted in red in
the figure above). igl::nrosy
can also generate N-RoSy fields [20],
which are a generalization of vector fields where in every face the vector is
defined up to a constant rotation of \(2\pi / N\). As can be observed in
the following figure, the singularities of the fields generated with different
N are of different types and they appear in different positions.
We demonstrate how to call and plot N-RoSy fields in Example
504, where the degree of the field can be change
pressing the number keys. igl::nrosy
implements the algorithm proposed in
[21]. N-RoSy fields can also be interpolated with the algorithm
proposed in [22], see Section 507 for more details
(igl::n_polyvector).
The previous parametrization methods were focusing on creating parametrizations of surface patches aimed at texture mapping or baking of other surface properties such as normals and high-frequency details. Global, seamless parametrization aims at parametrizing complex shapes with a parametrization that is aligned with a given set of directions for the purpose of surface remeshing. In libigl, we provide a reference implementation of the pipeline proposed in the mixed integer quadrangulation paper [21].
The first step involves the design of a 4-RoSy field (sometimes called cross field) that describes the alignment of the edges of the desired quadrilateral remeshing. The field constraints are usually manually specified or extracted from the principal curvature directions. In [Example 506], we simply fix one face in a random direction.
Given the cross field, we now want to cut the surface so that it becomes homeomorphic to a disk. While this could be done directly on the cross-field, we opt to perform this operation on its bisector field (a copy of the field rotated by 45 degrees) since it is more stable and generic. Working on the bisectors allow us to take as input generalized, non-orthogonal and non-unit length cross fields.
We thus rotate the field,
and we remove the rotation ambiguity by assigning to each face a u and a v direction. The assignment is done with a breadth-first search starting from a random face.
You can imagine this process as combing an hairy surface: you will be able to comb part of it, but at some point you will not be able to consistently comb the entire surface (Hairy ball theorem). The discontinuities in the combing define the cut graph:
Finally, we rotate the combed field by 45 degrees to undo the initial degrees rotation:
The combed cross field can be seen as the ideal Jacobian of the parametrization that will be computed in the next section.
The mesh is cut along the seams and a parametrization is computed trying to find two scalar functions whose gradient matches the combed cross field directions. This is a classical Poisson problem, that is solved minimizing the following quadratic energy:
\[ E(\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}) = |\nabla \mathbf{u} - X_u|^2 + |\nabla \mathbf{v} - X_v|^2 \]
where \(X_u\) and \(X_u\) denotes the combed cross field. Solving this problem generates a parametrization whose u and v isolines are aligned with the input cross field.
We hide the seams by adding integer constraints to the Poisson problem that align the isolines on both sides of each seam [21].
Note that this parametrization can only be used for remeshing purposes, since it contains many overlaps.
A quad mesh can be extracted from this parametrization using libQEx (not included in libigl). The full pipeline is implemented in Example 505.
Anisotropic and non-uniform quad remeshing is important to concentrate the elements in the regions with more details. It is possible to extend the MIQ quad meshing framework to generate anisotropic quad meshes using a mesh deformation approach [23].
The input of the anisotropic remeshing algorithm is a sparse set of constraints
that define the shape and scale of the desired quads. This can be encoded as a
frame field, which is a pair of non-orthogonal and non-unit length vectors. The
frame field can be interpolated by decomposing it in a 4-RoSy field and a
unique affine transformation. The two parts can then be interpolated
separately, using igl::nrosy
for the cross field, and an harmonic interpolant
for the affine part.
After the interpolation, the surface is warped to transform each frame into an orthogonal and unit length cross (i.e. removing the scaling and skewness from the frame). This deformation defines a new embedding (and a new metric) for the surface.
The deformed surface can the be isotropically remeshed using the MIQ algorithm that has been presented in the previous section.
The UV coordinates of the deformed surface can then be used to transport the parametrization to the original surface, where the isolines will trace a quad mesh whose elements are similar to the shape prescribed in the input frame field.
Our implementation (Example 506) uses MIQ to generate the UV parametrization, but other algorithms could be applied: the only desiderata is that the generated quad mesh should be as isotropic as possible.
N-RoSy vector fields can be further generalized to represent arbitrary
vector-sets, with arbitrary angles between them and with arbitrary lengths
[24]. This generalization is called N-PolyVector field, and
libigl provides the function igl::n_polyvector
to design them starting from a
sparse set of constraints (Example 507).
The core idea is to represent the vector set as the roots of a complex polynomial: The polynomial coefficients are then harmonically interpolated leading to polynomials whose roots smoothly vary over the surface.
Globally optimal direction fields [22] are a special case of
PolyVector fields. If the constraints are taken from an N-RoSy field,
igl::n_polyvector
generates a field that is equivalent, after normalization,
to a globally optimal direction field.
Two tangent vectors lying on a face of a triangle mesh are conjugate if
\[ k_1 (u^T d_1)(v^T d_1) + k_2(u^T d_2)(v^T d_2) = 0. \]
This condition is very important in architectural geometry: The faces of an infinitely dense quad mesh whose edges are aligned with a conjugate field are planar. Thus, a quad mesh whose edges follow a conjugate field are easier to planarize [25].
Finding a conjugate vector field that satisfies given directional constraints is a standard problem in architectural geometry, which can be tackled by deforming a Poly-Vector field to the closest conjugate field.
This algorithm [24] alternates a global step, which enforces smoothness, with a local step, that projects the field on every face to the closest conjugate field (Example 508).
A quad mesh can be transformed in a planar quad mesh with Shape-Up [26], a local/global approach that uses the global step to enforce surface continuity and the local step to enforce planarity.
Example 509 planarizes a quad mesh until it satisfies a user-given planarity threshold.
An additional positive side effect of using matrices as basic types is that it is easy to exchange data between libigl and other softwares and libraries.
Geometry processing applications often require a considerable amount of computational time and/or manual input. Serializing the state of the application is a simple strategy to greatly increase the development efficiency. It allows to quickly start debugging just before the crash happens, avoiding to wait for the precomputation to take place every time and it also makes your experiments reproducible, allowing to quickly test algorithms variants on the same input data.
Serialization is often not considered in geometry processing due to the extreme difficulty in serializing pointer-based data structured, such as an half-edge data structure (OpenMesh, CGAL), or a pointer based indexed structure (VCG).
In libigl, serialization is much simpler, since the majority of the functions use basic types, and pointers are used in very rare cases (usually to interface with external libraries). Libigl bundles a simple and self-contained XML serialization framework, that drastically reduces the overhead required to add serialization to your applications.
Assume that the state of your application is a mesh and a set of integer ids:
class State : public igl::XMLSerialization
{
public:
State() : XMLSerialization("dummy") {}
Eigen::MatrixXd V;
Eigen::MatrixXi F;
std::vector<int> ids;
void InitSerialization()
{
xmlSerializer->Add(V , "V");
xmlSerializer->Add(F , "F");
xmlSerializer->Add(ids, "ids");
}
};
Any class can be made serializable by inheriting from `igl::XMLSerialization
and trivially implementing the InitSerialization
method. The library can serialize all the basic stl
types, all Eigen
types and any class inheriting
from igl::XMLSerialization
.
The state can be saved into an xml file with:
igl::XMLSerializer serializer_save("601_Serialization");
serializer_save.Add(state,"State");
serializer_save.Save("temp.xml",true);
This code generates the following xml file (assuming V
and F
contains a simple mesh with two triangles, and ids
contains the numbers 6 and 7):
<:::601_Serialization>
<State>
<V rows="4" cols="3" matrix="
0,0,0,
1,0,0,
1,1,1,
2,1,0"/>
<F rows="2" cols="3" matrix="
0,1,2,
1,3,2"/>
<ids size="2" vector_int="
6,7"/>
</State>
</:::601_Serialization>
The xml file can be loaded in a similar way:
State loaded_state;
igl::XMLSerializer serializer_load("601_Serialization");
serializer_load.Add(loaded_state,"State");
serializer_load.Load("temp.xml");
The serialization framework can also be used as a convenient interface to provide parameters to command line applications, since the xml files can be directly edited with a standard text editor.
The code snippets above are extracted from Example 601. We strongly suggest that you make the entire state of your application always serializable since it will save you a lot of troubles when you will be preparing figures for a scientific report. It is very common to have to do small changes to figures, and being able to serialize the entire state just before you take screenshots will save you many painful hours before a submission deadline.
Libigl can be interfaced with Matlab to offload numerically heavy computation to a Matlab script. The major advantage of this approach is that you will be able to develop efficient and complex user-interfaces in C++, while exploting the syntax and fast protototyping features of matlab. In particular, the use of an external Matlab script in a libigl application allows to change the Matlab code while the C++ application is running, greatly increasing coding efficiency.
We demonstrate how to integrate Matlab in a libigl application in Example 602. The example uses Matlab to compute the Eigenfunctions of the discrete Laplacian operator, relying on libigl for mesh IO, visualization and for computing the Laplacian operator.
Libigl can connect to an existing instance of Matlab (or launching a new one on Linux/MacOSX) using:
igl::mlinit(&engine);
The cotangent Laplacian is computed using igl::cotmatrix and uploaded to the Matlab workspace:
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
igl::mlsetmatrix(&engine,"L",L);
It is now possible to use any Matlab function on the data. For example, we can see the sparsity pattern of L using spy:
igl::mleval(&engine,"spy(L)");
The results of Matlab computations can be returned back to the C++ application
igl::mleval(&engine,"[EV,~] = eigs(-L,10,'sm')");
igl::mlgetmatrix(&engine,"EV",EV);
and plotted using the libigl viewer.
To aid debugging, libigl also supplies functions to write Matlab .mat
“Workspaces”. This C++ snippet saves a mesh and it’s sparse Laplacian matrix to
a file:
igl::readOFF("../shared/fertility.off", V, F);
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
igl::MatlabWorkspace mw;
mw.save(V,"V");
mw.save_index(F,"F");
mw.save(L,"L");
mw.write("fertility.mat");
Then this workspace can be loaded into a Matlab IDE:
load fertility.mat
The igl::MatlabWorkspace
depends on Matlab libraries to compile and run,
but—in contrast to the engine routines above—will avoid launching a Matlab
instance upon execution.
Eigen supplies a sophisticated API for printing its matrix types to the screen. Libigl has wrapped up a particularly useful formatting which makes it simple to copy standard output from a C++ program into a Matlab IDE. The code:
igl::readOFF("../shared/2triangles.off", V, F);
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
std::cout<<igl::matlab_format(V,"V")<<std::endl;
std::cout<<igl::matlab_format((F.array()+1).eval(),"F")<<std::endl;
std::cout<<igl::matlab_format(L,"L")<<std::endl;
produces the output:
V = [
0 0 0
1 0 0
1 1 1
2 1 0
];
F = [
1 2 3
2 4 3
];
LIJV = [
1 1 -0.7071067811865476
2 1 0.7071067811865475
3 1 1.570092458683775e-16
1 2 0.7071067811865475
2 2 -1.638010440969447
3 2 0.6422285251880865
4 2 0.2886751345948129
1 3 1.570092458683775e-16
2 3 0.6422285251880865
3 3 -0.9309036597828995
4 3 0.2886751345948129
2 4 0.2886751345948129
3 4 0.2886751345948129
4 4 -0.5773502691896258
];
L = sparse(LIJV(:,1),LIJV(:,2),LIJV(:,3));
which is easily copied and pasted into Matlab for debugging, etc.
It is also possible to call libigl functions from matlab, compiling them as MEX functions. This can be used to offload to C++ code the computationally intensive parts of a Matlab application.
We provide a wrapper for igl::readOBJ
in Example 603.
We plan to provide wrappers for all our functions in the future, if you are
interested in this feature (or if you want to help implementing it) please let
us know.
The generation of high-quality triangle and tetrahedral meshes is a very common task in geometry processing. We provide wrappers in libigl to triangle and Tetgen.
A triangle mesh with a given boundary can be created with:
igl::triangulate(V,E,H,V2,F2,"a0.005q");
where E
is a set of boundary edges (#E by 2), H
is a set of 2D positions of
points contained in holes of the triangulation (#H by 2) and (V2
,F2
) is the
generated triangulation. Additional parameters can be passed to triangle
, to
control the quality: "a0.005q"
enforces a bound on the maximal area of the
triangles and a minimal angle of 20 degrees. In Example
604, the interior of a square (excluded a smaller square
in its interior) is triangulated.
Similarly, the interior of a closed manifold surface can be tetrahedralized
using the function igl::tetrahedralize
which wraps the Tetgen library (Example
605):
igl::tetrahedralize(V,F,"pq1.414", TV,TT,TF);
Ambient occlusion is a rendering technique used to calculate the exposure of each point in a surface to ambient lighting. It is usually encoded as a scalar (normalized between 0 and 1) associated with the vertice of a mesh.
Formally, ambient occlusion is defined as:
\[ A_p = \frac{1}{\pi} \int_\omega V_{p,\omega}(n \cdot \omega) d\omega \]
where \(V_{p,\omega}\) is the visibility function at p, defined to be zero if p is occluded in the direction \(\omega\) and one otherwise, and \(d\omega\) is the infinitesimal solid angle step of the integration variable \(\omega\).
The integral is usually approximated by casting rays in random directions around each vertex. This approximation can be computed using the function:
igl::ambient_occlusion(V,F,V_samples,N_samples,500,AO);
that given a scene described in V
and F
, computes the ambient occlusion of
the points in V_samples
whose associated normals are N_samples
. The
number of casted rays can be controlled (usually at least 300–500 rays are
required to get a smooth result) and the result is returned in AO
, as a
single scalar for each sample.
Ambient occlusion can be used to darken the surface colors, as shown in Example 606
Picking vertices and faces using the mouse is very common in geometry processing applications. While this might seem a simple operation, its implementation is not straighforward. Libigl contains a function that solves this problem using the Embree raycaster. Its usage is demonstrated in Example 607:
bool hit = igl::unproject_onto_mesh(
Vector2f(x,y),
F,
viewer.core.view * viewer.core.model,
viewer.core.proj,
viewer.core.viewport,
*ei,
fid,
vid);
This function casts a ray from the view plane in the view direction. Variables
x
and y
are
the mouse screen coordinates; view
, model
, proj
are the view, model and
projection matrix respectively; viewport
is the viewport in OpenGL format;
ei
contains a Bounding Volume
Hierarchy constructed
by Embree, and fid
and vid
are the picked face and vertex, respectively.
Extreme deformations or parametrizations with high-distortion might flip elements. This is undesirable in many applications, and it is possible to avoid it by introducing a non-linear constraints that guarantees that the area of every element remain positive.
Libigl can be used to compute Locally Injective Maps [27] using a variety of deformation energies. A simple deformation of a 2D grid is computed in Example 608.
Libigl is in active development, and we plan to focus on the following features in the next months:
A better and more consistent documentation, plus extending this tutorial to cover more libigl features.
Implement a mixed-integer solver which only uses Eigen to remove the dependency on CoMiSo.
Improve the robustness and performance of the active set QP solver. In particular, handle linearly dependent constraints.
Implement more mesh analysis functions, including structural analysis for masonry and 3D-printability analysis.
Increase support for point clouds and general polygonal meshes.
What would you like to see in libigl? Contact us! or post a feature request.
We encourage you to contribute to the library and to report problems and bugs. The best way to contribute new feature or bug fixes is to fork the libigl repository and to open a pull request on our github repository.
Mark Meyer, Mathieu Desbrun, Peter Schröder and Alan H. Barr, “Discrete Differential-Geometry Operators for Triangulated 2-Manifolds,” 2003.
Daniele Panozzo, Enrico Puppo, Luigi Rocca, “Efficient Multi-scale Curvature and Crease Estimation,” 2010.
Alec Jacobson, Algorithms and Interfaces for Real-Time Deformation of 2D and 3D Shapes, 2013.
Andrei Sharf, Thomas Lewiner, Gil Shklarski, Sivan Toledo, and Daniel Cohen-Or. “Interactive topology-aware surface reconstruction,” 2007.
Michael Kazhdan, Jake Solomon, Mirela Ben-Chen, “Can Mean-Curvature Flow Be Made Non-Singular,” 2012.
Raid M. Rustamov, “Multiscale Biharmonic Kernels”, 2011.
Matrio Botsch and Leif Kobbelt. “An Intuitive Framework for Real-Time Freeform Modeling,” 2004.
Alec Jacobson, Elif Tosun, Olga Sorkine, and Denis Zorin. “Mixed Finite Elements for Variational Surface Modeling,” 2010.
Olga Sorkine, Yaron Lipman, Daniel Cohen-Or, Marc Alexa, Christian Rössl and Hans-Peter Seidel. “Laplacian Surface Editing,” 2004.
Alec Jacobson, Ilya Baran, Jovan Popović, and Olga Sorkine. “Bounded Biharmonic Weights for Real-Time Deformation,” 2011.
Ladislav Kavan, Steven Collins, Jiri Zara, and Carol O’Sullivan. “Geometric Skinning with Approximate Dual Quaternion Blending,” 2008.
Olga Sorkine and Marc Alexa, “As-rigid-as-possible Surface Modeling.” 2007.
Isaac Chao, Ulrich Pinkall, Patrick Sanan, Peter Schröder. “A Simple Geometric Model for Elastic Deformations,” 2010.
Alexa McAdams, Andrew Selle, Rasmus Tamstorf, Joseph Teran, Eftychios Sifakis. “Computing the Singular Value Decomposition of 3x3 matrices with minimal branching and elementary floating point operations,” 2011.
Alec Jacobson, Ilya Baran, Ladislav Kavan, Jovan Popović, and Olga Sorkine. “Fast Automatic Skinning Transformations,” 2012.
Multiresolution Analysis of Arbitrary Meshes, Matthias Eck, Tony DeRose, Tom Duchamp, Hugues Hoppe, Michael Lounsbery, Werner Stuetzle, SIGGRAPH 2005
Least Squares Conformal Maps, for Automatic Texture Atlas Generation, Bruno Lévy, Sylvain Petitjean, Nicolas Ray, Jérome Maillot, SIGGRAPH 2002
Spectral Conformal Parameterization, Patrick Mullen, Yiying Tong, Pierre Alliez, Mathieu Desbrun, CGF 2008
A Local/Global Approach to Mesh Parameterization Ligang Liu, Lei Zhang, Yin Xu, Craig Gotsman, Steven J. Gortler SGP 2008
N-Symmetry Direction Field Design, Nicolas Ray, Bruno Vallet, Wan Chiu Li, Bruno Lévy TOG 2008
Mixed-integer quadrangulation, David Bommes, Henrik Zimmer, Leif Kobbelt SIGGRAPH 2009
Globally Optimal Direction Fields Knöppel, Crane, Pinkall, Schröder SIGGRAPH 2013
Frame Fields: Anisotropic and Non-Orthogonal Cross Fields, Daniele Panozzo, Enrico Puppo, Marco Tarini, Olga Sorkine-Hornung, SIGGRAPH, 2014
Designing N-PolyVector Fields with Complex Polynomials Olga Diamanti, Amir Vaxman, Daniele Panozzo, Olga Sorkine-Hornung, SGP 2014
General Planar Quadrilateral Mesh Design Using Conjugate Direction Field Yang Liu, Weiwei Xu, Jun Wang, Lifeng Zhu, Baining Guo, Falai Chen, Guoping Wang SIGGRAPH Asia 2011
Shape-Up: Shaping Discrete Geometry with Projections Sofien Bouaziz, Mario Deuss, Yuliy Schwartzburg, Thibaut Weise, Mark Pauly SGP 2012
Locally Injective Mappings Christian Schüller, Ladislav Kavan, Daniele Panozzo, Olga Sorkine-Hornung, SGP 2013