Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics Library

Adaptive Unwrapping for Interactive Texture Painting

Author(s): Takeo Igarashi, Dennis Cosgrove.
Proceedings: 2001 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, 2001.
[BibTeX]

Abstract:
We present a method for dynamically generating an efficient texture bitmap and its associated UV-mapping in an interactive texture painting system for 3D models. Typical 3D texture painting programs require the user to explicitly define the underlying UV-mapping from 3D geometry to 2D bitmap prior to painting. This mapping is unchanged by the painting process. However, a predefined UV-mapping can cause distortion at arbitrary locations and waste bitmap memory in unpainted areas. To solve these problems, we propose an adaptive unwrapping mechanism where the system dynamically creates a tailored UV-mapping for newly painted polygons during the interactive painting process. This eliminates the distortion of brush strokes, and the resulting texture bitmap is more compact because the system allocates texture space only for the painted polygons. In addition, this dynamic texture allocation allows the user to paint smoothly at any zoom level. This technique can be efficiently implemented using standard 3D rendering engines, and the painted models can be stored as standard textured polygonal models. We implemented a prototype system, called Chameleon, and our users’ experiences suggest that our technique is very useful for simple painting by casual users.