Ribbons: A representation for point clouds
Author(s): Adam Runions, Faramarz Samavati, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz.
Article: The Visual Computer, Vol. 23, No. 9--11, pp. 945--954, September,
2007.
[BibTeX] [DOI] 
Abstract:
Point clouds are usually represented either globally, as surfaces, or locally, as sets of points with small neighbourhoods. We propose an intermediate representation, called ribbons, which is obtained by partitioning a point cloud into one-dimensional strips. This representation is well suited to the placement of strokes in nonphotorealistic rendering, and can be visualized ef?ciently using quad strips. Methods for performing hatching, cross-hatching, and silhouette renderings are presented. Ribbons also allow for the application of curve-based operations to the point cloud.