Zoomorphic shapes are man-made shapes that possess the form or appearance of an animal. They have desirable aesthetic properties, but are difficult to create using conventional modeling tools. We present a method for creating zoomorphic shapes by merging a man-made shape and an animal shape. To identify a pair of shapes that are suitable for merging, we use an efficient graph kernel based technique. We formulate the merging process as a continuous optimization problem where the two shapes are deformed jointly to minimize an energy function combining several design factors. The modeler can adjust the weighting between these factors to attain high-level control over the final shape produced. A novel technique ensures that the zoomorphic shape does not violate the design restrictions of the man-made shape. We demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of our approach by generating a wide variety of zoomorphic shapes.
This project is one example of functional analysis of a 3D shape. It is related to thrust 1.2.2 Computational Design – Multi-functional analysis and thrust 1.3 Design and Manufacturing for Functionality and Aesthetics. Preliminary results of this project are published in the prestigious computer graphics conference – ACM SIGGRAPH 2015.
A Dragon Vase is created by merging a vase with several dragons.