distance.c

Distance field computation from a 3D model
- See also

Distance field computation from a 3D model

The goal is to build a distance field representation of a 3D CAD model.

#include "grid/octree.h"
#include "utils.h"
#include "distance.h"
#include "fractions.h"
#include "view.h"

int main()
{

We get the 3D model from the Large Geometric Models Archive. This is in PLY format which we need to convert to STL using meshlab.

  system ("test -f distance.stl || "
	  "(wget http://www.cc.gatech.edu/data_files/large_models/horse.ply.gz && "
	  "gunzip -f horse.ply.gz && "
	  "meshlabserver -i horse.ply -o distance.stl)");

We read the STL file, compute the bounding box of the model and set the domain center and size using this bounding box.

  coord * p = input_stl (fopen ("distance.stl", "r"));
  coord min, max;
  bounding_box (p, &min, &max);  
  double maxl = -HUGE;
  foreach_dimension()
    if (max.x - min.x > maxl)
      maxl = max.x - min.x;
  
  init_grid (8);
  size (1.2*maxl);
  origin ((max.x + min.x)/2. - L0/2,
	  (max.y + min.y)/2. - L0/2,
	  (max.z + min.z)/2. - L0/2);

We initialize the distance field on the coarse initial mesh and refine it adaptively until the threshold error (on distance) is reached.

  scalar d[];
  distance (d, p);
  while (adapt_wavelet ({d}, (double[]){5e-4*L0}, 10).nf);

We display an isosurface of the distance function coloured with the level of refinement.

  view (fov = 15.65, quat = {-0.52,0.31,0.38,-0.7},
	tx = -0.045, ty = 0.015, width = 640, height = 480, bg = {1,1,1});
  isosurface ("d", 0, color = "level", min = 5, max = 10);
  save ("horse.png");

We also compute the volume and surface fractions from the distance field.

  scalar f[];
  face vector s[];
  solid (f, s, (d[] + d[-1] + d[0,-1] + d[-1,-1] +
		d[0,0,-1] + d[-1,0,-1] + d[0,-1,-1] + d[-1,-1,-1])/8.);

Finally we display the surface reconstructed from volume fractions.

  clear();
  draw_vof ("f", "s");
  draw_vof ("f", "s", edges = true, lw = 0.5);
  save ("vof.png");
}

Note that the “tail” of the horse is an artefact due to an inconsistency in the surface mesh, which is self-intersecting near this point.

Isosurface of the distance function coloured with level of refinement.

src/examples/distance.c

Distance field computation from a 3D model

See also