A Heuristic Method for Generating 2D CSG Trees from Bitmaps

This paper presents a method for generating compact and effective constructive-solid-geometry (CSG) object representations from 2D bitmap representations. The method consists of two parts: a stochastic search procedure for finding candidate CSG trees and a local optimization procedure that modifies the primitives of a given CSG tree to effect a better match. Results for several sample input bitmaps are presented and an application of this method to automatic geometric morphing between pairs of bitmaps is shown. This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c ©Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 1995 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139