A level-set approach for the metamorphosis of solid models

This paper presents a new approach to 3D shape metamorphosis. We express th e interpolation of two shapes as a process where one shape deforms to maxim ize its similarity with another shape. The process incrementally optimizes an objective function while deforming an implicit surface model. We represe nt the deformable surface as a level set (iso-surface) of a densely sampled scalar function of three dimensions. Such level-set models have been shown to mimic conventional parametric deformable surface models by encoding sur face movements as changes in the grayscale values of a volume data set. Thu s, a well-founded mathematical structure leads to a set of procedures that describes how voxel values can be manipulated to create deformations that a re represented as a sequence of volumes. The result is a 3D morphing method that offers several advantages over previous methods, including minimal ne ed for user input, no model parameterization, flexible topology, and subvox el accuracy.