FRENCH SURFACE: A New Technique for Surface Design skapps 0285 French Surface: A New Technique for Surface Design

Introduction and Motivation We present a new user-friendly interface for surface design. The goal is to overcome limitations associated with traditional methods: their dependence on freehand controling and their rigid mathematical structures. Our solution is motivated by the drafter’s tool called French curves, which are used as templates for tracing curves. Digital French curves are, for example, investigated by Singh[2]. Our project considers its analogue in one higher dimension, namely 3D surfaces. A predrawn set of surfaces, called French surfaces, is given to the user to choose from. The selected surfaces are then connected together to form the final model. The advantage of this approach is that the only input from the users is their artistic expressions, not their mathematical skills. Initial testing shows that the system is easy to learn and can be quickly used to construct models. Examples usings our technique are shown in Fig 1.