Abstract: An improvement to a voxel-based system to permit rapidly deforming volumetric objects made up of inhomogeneous material provides different material constraints assigned to different elements, with the constraints of a link between two neighboring elements being calculated from contributions of the two affected elements. The order in which neighbors of moved element are considered for a move determines where in the body information is propagated first. The processing order can therefore be used to model different direction-dependent propagation speeds in the material.

Abstract: A system for generating a surface representation from binary sampled data cludes means for iteratively smoothing the surface representation, while constraining the surface to conform to details in the surface of the binary data. Means are also provided to convert the surface representation into a form useful for polygon rendering and for volume rendering, with the subject system useable to generate a smooth surfaces for high quality rendering of objects stored as binary-sampled data.

Abstract: A linked volumetric representation for graphical objects is presented together with techniques for physically-plausible modeling of object cutting, joining and tearing. In one embodiment, each element is may be explicitly linked to its six nearest neighbors by storing pointers to those neighbors in the element's data structure. The link between two elements can be cut when a graphical representation of cutting tool passes between the elements by setting the appropriate neighbor pointers in the two elements to point to NULL instead of to each other. If material limits in the link between two elements are exceeded during simulation of object deformation, the link can be torn apart by setting the appropriate neighbor pointers in the two elements to NULL. When a joining tool is applied to two volumetric objects in close proximity, edge elements in the two objects that have complimentary neighbors set to NULL can be joined by setting these missing neighbors to point to each other.

Abstract: A volumetric data representation for graphical objects encodes the distance of data elements to the nearest object surface, with means being provided for estimating the direction and magnitude of surface normals from the tance values. The subject system can be used to accurately reconstruct the normal direction of a slowly varying surface in volume sampled data for high quality Volume Rendering, accurate force reflection in haptic feedback, and accurate force calculation and object penetration estimation in physically-based graphics.