Surface editing (Q4356935)

Changing the shape of a polynomial \(B\)-spline \(f(u, v)\) surface is easy but the results of changing weights cannot be predicted; for practical purposes experimenting with different weights can be very time consuming and ineffective. The authors consider cases where one wants (a) to approximate a given surface by a smoother one, (b) compute a smooth surface such that the values \(f(u_i,v_i)\) are approximated by given values at specified points, (c) compute a smooth surface whose normal is close to given directions at specified points. Each of these conditions can be expressed by the demand that a certain quadratic expression in the coefficients of the spline should be minimal. To the weighted sum of these functional is added the integral over the parameter area (with varying weights) of \(|\partial^if/\partial r^i|^2\) for \(i=1,2,3\) to insure smoothness. The entire functional should be minimized. A number of examples is given and methods of visualizing smoothness are shown. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0863.00021].