What is it about?
In this paper we propose a new planar shape representation, the medial branch graph representation (MBGR) which allows to easily generate, vary and edit all-new sorts of parametric shapes. Each MBGR shape is described by a collection of connected control circles organized as a graph. Each pair of connected circles generates a branch of the shape. The boundaries of the branches are designed using cubic Bézier curves which enable shape representation in a compact SVG format. Each circle is associated with a regularity parameter locally controlling the smoothness of the branch connections. In this way, we can manage shapes having both sharp corners and smooth boundaries.
Featured Image
Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek, abstract-art on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The space of shapes is virtually infinite. The tool enables generating shapes that vary randomly while keeping the same style. It also makes it very easy to design a shape style and then vary it. Finally, the tool also proposes virtually infinitely many random shapes from which the user can pick, and easily vary and modify. To illustrate the potential of the MBGR representation we have created an online facility (https://mbgrg.github.io/mbgrg/) where the user can create/edit MBGR shapes automatically or interactively.
Perspectives
The fact that shapes can be randomly generated according to some prescribed style opens the way to generate images combining these shapes. Several abstract image generation projects using the randomly generated shapes are accessible at https://sites.google.com/view/jmandla, where each project also has its own line demo enabling users to generate their own images and image styles.
Jean-Michel Morel
City University of Hong Kong
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Generation and Editing of 2D Shapes using a Branched Representation, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing Communications and Applications, September 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3691635.
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