Skeleton-driven {Laplacian} Mesh Deformations

In this report, a new free-form shape deformation approach is proposed. We combine a skeleton-driven mesh deformation technique with discrete differential coordinates in order to create natural-looking global shape deformations. Given a triangle mesh, we first extract a skeletal mesh, a two-sided Voronoi-based approximation of the medial axis. Next the skeletal mesh is modified by free-form deformations. Then a desired global shape deformation is obtained by reconstructing the shape corresponding to the deformed skeletal mesh. The reconstruction is based on using discrete differential coordinates. Our method preserves fine geometric details and original shape thickness because of using discrete differential coordinates and skeleton-driven deformations. We also develop a new mesh evolution technique which allow us to eliminate possible global and local self-intersections of the deformed mesh while preserving fine geometric details. Finally, we present a multiresolution version of our approach in order to simplify and accelerate the deformation process