This chapter covers
- Understanding the pros and cons of boundary representation modeling
- Seeing the triangle mesh as a particular case of a boundary representation
- Understanding the downsides of triangle mesh modeling
- Confidently using contouring algorithms: Marching cubes and dual contouring
- Understanding the trade-off between the model precision and model size
With signed distance functions, we model a 2D shape or a 3D body by introducing a rule. The function is negative inside the shape, positive outside, and 0 on the border. Most of the time, we’re not interested in anything apart from the border, which alone is enough to model a shape. So why bother modeling anything else?
With boundary representation, we model only the boundary of a body or shape. In 2D, we model a set of contours that represents the shape’s border. In 3D, we model a set of surfaces that represents the border of a body.