Autocomplete element fields and interactive synthesis system development for aggregate applications.

Abstract

Aggregate elements are ubiquitous in natural and man-made objects and have played an important role in the application of graphics, design and visualization. However, to efficiently arrange these aggregate elements with varying anisotropy and deformability still remains challenging, in particular in 3D environments. To overcome such a thorny issue, we thus introduce autocomplete element fields, including an element distribution formulation that can effectively cope with diverse output compositions with controllable element distributions in high production standard and efficiency as well as an element field formulation that can smoothly orient all the synthesized elements following given inputs, such as scalar or direction fields. The pro- posed formulations can not only properly synthesize distinct types of aggregate elements across various domain spaces without incorporating any extra process but also directly compute complete element fields from partial specifications without requiring fully specified inputs in any algorithmic step. Furthermore, in order to reduce input workload and enhance output quality for better usability and interactivity, we further develop an interactive synthesis system, centered on the idea of our autocomplete element fields, to facilitate the creation of element aggregations within different output do- mains. Analogous to conventional painting workflows, through a palette- based brushing interface, users can interactively mix and place a few aggregate elements over a brushing canvas and let our system automatically populate more aggregate elements with intended orientations and scales for the rest of outcome. The developed system can empower the users to iteratively design a variety of novel mixtures with reduced workload and enhanced quality under an intuitive and user-friendly brushing workflow with- out the necessity of a great deal of manual labor or technical expertise. We validate our prototype system with a pilot user study and exhibit its application in 2D graphic design, 3D surface collage, and 3D aggregate modeling.