Zoomorphic Design

Noah Duncan1

Lap-Fai Yu2

Sai-Kit Yeung3

Demetri Terzopoulos1

1University of California, Los Angeles

2University of Massachusetts Boston

3Singapore University of Technology and Design



Input
A zoomorphic playground created by our approach

Abstract 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.

Keywords: zoomorphic design, shape creation

Publications:

Acknowledgements:

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We also thank Michael S. Brown for narrating the video; William Chi-Fu Lai for providing help and advice on rendering; and Ibraheem Alhashim and Alec Jacobson for providing source code for ARAP mesh deformation. Lap Fai Yu is supported by the University of Massachusetts Boston StartUp Grant P20150000029280 and by the Joseph P. Healey Research Grant Program provided by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Strategic Initiatives & Dean of Graduate Studies of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Sai-Kit Yeung is supported by SUTD-ZJU Collaboration Research Grant 2012 SUTDZJU/RES/03/2012, SUTD-MIT International Design Center Grant IDG31300106, and Singapore MOE Academic Research Fund MOE2013-T2-1-159. Part of the work was done when Noah was visiting SUTD and supported by Singapore MOE Academic Research Fund MOE2013-T2-1-159. We acknowledge the support of the SUTD Digital Manufacturing and Design (DManD) Centre which is supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation.


Results:

Some zoomorphic designs created by our system: