An efficient spherical mapping algorithm and its application on spherical harmonics

The sphere is a natural and seamless parametric domain for closed genus-0 surfaces. We introduce an efficient hierarchical optimization approach for the computation of spherical parametrization for closed genus-0 surfaces by minimizing a nonlinear energy balancing angle and area distortions. The mapping results are bijective and lowly distorted. Our algorithm converges efficiently and is suitable to manipulate large-scale geometric models. We demonstrate and analyze the effectiveness of our mapping in spherical harmonics decomposition. © 2013 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg