Space-Time Blending for Heterogeneous Objects

Abstract

Space-time blending (STB) is an established technique allowing to implement a metamorphosis operation between geometric shapes. In this paper we significantly extend the STB method to make it possible to deal with heterogeneous objects, which are volumetric objects with attributes representing their physical properties. The STB method, used for geometry transformation, is naturally combined with space-time transfinite interpolation, used for attribute (e.g. colour) transformation. Geometry and attribute transformations are interconnected and happen simultaneously in an higher dimensional specific STB space. We use hybrid function representation, unifying function representation with signed distance fields and with adaptively sampled distance fields. We show how the new method works by applying it to 4D animated Cubism.