by Marie-Paule Gascuel
The First International Workshop on Implicit Surfaces IS `95, a Eurographics Workshop, was held in Grenoble, France, 18-19 April 1995. The workshop was co-chaired by Brian Wyvill, University of Calgary, Canada and Marie-Paule Gascuel, iMAGIS/IMAG, France, and sponsored by Eurographics, ERCIM, IMAG and INRIA. The workshop hosted 39 participants coming from 9 different countries: Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and USA. Very stimulating discussions took place during breaks, lunches, and the festive diner.
Presentations
The technical programme included 15 reviewed papers and two invited papers. In the first invited talk, Jules Bloomenthal presented a new solution for bulge elimination in the case of branching implicit surfaces. In the second one, Richard Parent described a system combining parametric and implicit techniques for animating human models interacting with their synthetic environment. The paper sessions of the conference covered the fields of modelling visualisation and animation of implicit surfaces.
Modelling
Carole Blanc and Christophe Schlick discussed the use of rational field functions and anisotropic skeletal points. John Hart gave an implicit expression of fractals enabling the use of blending operations between rough surfaces. Alexander Pasko applied functional approximations of CSG operations to general offsetting and metamorphosis. Andrew Guy focussed on the controlled blending problem for complex shape design.
Implicit versus parametric
Kees van Overveld compared parametric and implicit modelling techniques and proposed a method for applying interpolation constraints to implicit surfaces. Cindy Grimm presented a method for approximating an isosurface with a smooth parametric representation, while Luis Velho defined a multi-scale approach for the opposite conversion.
Rendering
Herve Laporte and Max Froumentin proposed a system for real time hardware display of quadrics. Jean-Dominique Gascuel presented a robust ray-tracing algorithm based on field values and derivative bounds stored in an octree. Luiz de Figueiredo discussed adaptive enumeration and rendering methods using affine arithmetic.
Interactive design
Mathieu Desbrun described a method for interactively sampling and displaying implicit surfaces. Jianhua Shen proposed a system for advanced human character design based on the combined use of metaballs and Bspline surfaces. Chandrajit Bajaj presented a method for interactive shape control of A-patches (smooth implicit surfaces in Bernstein-Bezier formi).
Animation
Vladimir Savchenko and Alexander Pasko [SP95] described a robust way of detecting collisions between implicitly-defined objects. Agata Opalach presented a layered model for producing lively animations of simplified characters modelled with implicit surfaces.
Future plans
The Second International Workshop on Implicit Surfaces IS `96 will be held in Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. For any information, please contact Kees van Overveld, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513; 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands