Abstract We consider the problem of reconstruction from incomplete point‐clouds. To find a closed mesh the reconstruction is guided by a set of primitive shapes which has been detected on the input point‐cloud (e.g. planes, cylinders etc.). With this guidance we not only continue the surrounding structure into the holes but also synthesize plausible edges and corners from the primitives' intersections. To this end we give a surface energy functional that incorporates the primitive shapes in a guiding vector field. The discretized functional can be minimized with an efficient graph‐cut algorithm. A novel greedy optimization strategy is proposed to minimize the functional under the constraint that surface parts corresponding to a given primitive must be connected. From the primitive shapes our method can also reconstruct an idealized model that is suitable for use in a CAD system.

Panoramic maps combine the advantages of both ordinary geographic maps and terrestrial images. While inheriting the familiar perspective of terrestrial images, they provide a good overview and avoid occlusion of important geographical features. The designer achieves this by skillful choice and integration of several views in a single image. As important features on the surface must be carefully rearranged to guarantee their visibility, the manual design of panoramic maps requires many hours of tedious and painstaking work. In this article we take a variational approach to the design of panoramic maps. Starting from conventional elevation data and aerial images, our method fully automatically computes panoramic maps from arbitrary viewpoints. It rearranges geographic structures to maximize the visibility of a specified set of features while minimizing the deformation of the landscape's shape.

Abstract To assist wayfinding and navigation, the display of maps and driving directions on mobile devices is nowadays commonplace. While existing system can naturally exploit GPS information to facilitate orientation, the inherently limited screen space is often perceived as a drawback compared to traditional street maps as it constrains the perception of contextual information. Moreover, occlusion issues add to this problem if the environment is shown from the popular egocentric perspective. In this paper we describe an interactive visualization system that addresses these problems by reallocating the available screen space. At the heart of our system are three novel visualization techniques: First, we propose a non‐standard perspective that allows to blend between the familiar pedestrian perspective and a standard map depiction with reduced occlusion. Second, we derive an efficient deformation technique that allows an interactive allocation of screen space to areas of interest like e.g. nearby touristic attractions. Finally, a path adaptive isometric perspective is proposed that reveals otherwise hidden facades in top‐down views. We describe efficient implementations of all techniques and exemplify our interactive system on real world urban models.

In this work we develop a new alternative to conventional maps for visualization of relatively short paths as they are frequently encountered in hotels, resorts or museums. Our approach is based on a warped rendering of a 3D model of the environment such that the visualized path appears to be straight even though it may contain several junctions. This has the advantage that the beholder of the image gains a realistic impression of the surroundings along the way which makes it easy to retrace the route in practice. We give an intuitive method for generation of such images and present results from user studies undertaken to evaluate the benefit of the warped images for orientation in unknown environments.

Mesh editing methods based on differential surface representations are known for their efficiency and ease of implementation. For reconstruction from such representations, local frames have to be determined which is a nonlinear problem. In linear approximations frames can either degenerate or become inconsistent with the geometry. Both results in contra-intuitive deformations. Existing nonlinear approaches, however, are comparatively slow and considerably more complex. In this paper we present a differential representation that implicitly enforces orthogonal and geometry consistent frames while allowing a simple and efficient implementation. In particular, it enforces conformal surface deformations preserving local texture features.

In order to compute texture atlases with low stretch and hardly visible texture seams existing texture mapping tools pose high demands on the quality of surface representations like consistent orientation, watertightness, or manifoldness which many models commonly used in day-to-day modeling practice fail to meet. In this paper we propose an approach that bridges the gap between requirements of high quality texture mapping tools and poor mesh connectivity of models used in practice. In the spirit of classical two-part mapping an intermediate proxy surface is created that can be processed by high quality texture mapping tools. The texture signal is transferred to the original geometry using a novel mapping technique. Avoiding a modification of the original geometry typical problems of mesh repairing approaches like approximation errors or feature corruption are circumvented. As our method poses almost no demands on connectivity it can also be applied to point clouds. Contrary to classical two- part mapping, the method requires little user-interaction. Its robustness and quality are demonstrated in several examples.