Deformable smooth surface design

A new paradigm for designing smooth surfaces is described. A finite set of points with weights specifies a closed surface in space referred to as skin . It consists of one or more components, each tangent continuous and free o f self-intersections and intersections with other components. The skin vari es continuously with the weights and locations of the points, and the varia tion includes the possibility of a topology change facilitated by the viola tion of tangent continuity at a single point in space and time. Application s of the skin to molecular modeling and to geometric deformation are discus sed.