MODELING MOLLUSK SHELLS WITH GENERALIZED CYLINDERS

The shape of mollusc shells has drawn the attention of scientists for a long rime already. Recently, the first computer-generated images of shells were presented. In this article, we present a way of modelling shells with generalized cylinders and textures. Generalized cylinders are defined by moving a 2D contour along a 3D trajectory, which is a n atural way for describing the shape of shells. Reaction-diffusion and bump map textures are mapped onto the surfaces of the generalized cyli nders to give these the appropriate appearance. Visualization is done by ray tracing, resulting in very realistic images. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.