Abstract

The aesthetic features of some free form surfaces, such as vases, despite being adjunct, can prove tedious and time consuming to create by the conventional surface models, such as NURBS. In this paper, we propose a new method that is able to rapidly generate complex free form surfaces, such as vases together with their accessory features using the fourth order partial differential equations (PDEs) with three vector-valued shape parameters. Vases of different shapes can be easily produced by altering the shape parameters, force functions and boundary conditions of the proposed PDE. As computational performance is of paramount significance for interactive computer graphics applications, an analytical solution to the PDE has been derived. The effects of the shape parameters, boundary conditions and force functions on the final surface shape have also been studied.