TURBS - topologically unrestricted rational B-splines (Q1381495)

The author develops a theory of tensor B-splines that may be used to represent surfaces of arbitrary genus. The main problem encountered here is that by subdividing a surface of genus \(\neq 0\) one must by necessity have vertices where \(n\neq 4\) surface patches come together. The main result is that if at such an extraordinary vertex the normalized tangent vectors of the boundary curves are linearly independent, then in order to obtain a \(C^k\) representation, the underlying Bézier splines must be of degree \(1k+2\) at least. The rest of the paper is given to a lucid explanation of the technique. For reasons of problems of implementation, only equally spaced knots are considered for the splines used for tensor products. An example is given of a choice of control points for extraordinary vertices of order \(n\) that is guaranteed to produce a smooth surface and is easily implemented but is not very satisfactory visually. The author promises further research on this problem.