Curves
Network structures
As part of an experimental game project I’ve been trying to use the Functy rendering routines to visualise network structures. At the moment it’s at a very early stage, but has - I think - already generated some interesting results.
The screenshot below shows a network of 60 nodes, each one rendered as a spherical co-ordinate function, joined together using links rendered as curves. I just plucked some simple functions out of the air to see what the results would be like but am hoping to extend it with more interesting shapes as things progress.
Functy rendered network structure
The various parts of the network are a little hard to discern with a static image, but when I tried to capture a video the result was a mess of fuzzy artefacts (I think there must be something going wrong with my screen capture software), so I gave up on that.
The next step, after neatening up the code, is to arrange better animation of the nodes and links, with dynamic movement based on things like the forces between the nodes. I’m hoping this will produce some really nice effects, and if anything comes of it I’ll put a bit more effort into getting a successful video capture.
Comparing implicit and parametric functions
In an earlier post I talked about Sederberg et al.’s paper that uses Elimination Theory to demonstrate how parametric curves can be represented in implicit form. Reading through the literature it quickly becomes clear that this is important work if you’re interested in rendering parametric curves or surfaces. Unfortunately it can be difficult to get to grips with the theory without also being able to play around with the functions themselves. Consequently I’d expected to spend much of my summer writing software to render the different types of curves for exploring them and play around with their different representations.
That was, until I realised Functy was quite capable of doing it already. Functy’s parametric curves are already perfectly suited to the rendering of parametric equations. This part might be obvious. Less obvious for me was that the colouring of a flat Cartesian surface is perfect for the rendering of the implicit form.
- Implicit and parametric form flat
- With height data representing the implicit value
Above are a couple of screenshots showing the two types of function. These are both taken from the example in another paper by Sederberg, Anderson and Goldman about “Implicitization, Inversion, and Intersection of Planar Rational Cubic Curves” (available from ScienceDirect). The curve is a quartic monoid which can be expressed parametrically and implicitly as follows.
Implicitly:
(x4 - 2x3y + 3x2y2 - xy3 +y4) + (2x3 - x2y + xy2 + 3y3) = 0
Parametrically:
x = - (3t3 + t2 - t + 2) / (t4 - t3 + 3t2 - 2t + 1)
y = - (3t4 + t3 - t2 + 2t) / (t4 - t3 + 3t2 - 2t + 1)
In the screenshots the red line is the parametric version of the curve for t in the interval (0, 1). The other colours on the surface represent the values of the implicit function. Note that the implicit function actually lies at the boundary of the yellow and blue areas. You can see this slightly better in the 3D version, where the height represents the value of the implicit function. The actual curve occurs only where this is zero - in other words where the surface cuts through the plane z = 0.
It was reassuring to see that the parametric curve matches the implicit version. It’s also interesting to note that the implicit version is rendered entirely using the shaders in a resolution-independent way. It’s possible to zoom in as much as you like without getting pixelisation. This is exciting for me since, although it’s not what I’m really trying to achieve (that would be too easy!), it hints at the possibility.
3D printed Functy rings
A parcel arrived from Shapeways recently containing some of the 3D printed ring prototypes I generated using Functy. The models were exported directly from Functy and converted into STY format before being directly uploaded to Shapeways for printing. All based on sine/cosine curves, there’s a flat version, a slightly bulging version and an irregular version. Since Shapeways did such a brilliant job printing the prototypes, the next step is to get them to print them in silver. Click on the links if you fancy having your own printed!
The Functy function files for all of these rings are up in the repository and will be included as example files in the next full release.
- Sine ring flat
- Sine ring bulge
- Sine ring irregular
- Sine ring flat
- Sine ring bulge
- Sine ring irregular
Animated Blender Render
After prompting by Tony’s superb gallery of images, I’ve spent a bit of time playing around using Blender to render models created using Functy.
This has also prompted a bit of extra functionality, and I’m hoping it will soon be able to export out multiple models from Functy to support animated functions. Using the current experimental code (there’s no front-end yet, but it’s in the pipeline) I managed to generate a kind of animated mercury whirlpool. It’s up on deviantart, and if you’re happy to wait for the download, please do take a look at the full animated version.
- Pre-render image from Functy
- Animation frame rendered using Blender
Brilliant Functy Renders by Tony Ralano
Tony Ralano has been creating some amazing renders by combining Functy models with his impressive Blender and 3DS Max skills. The image below is an example of a function exported out, then manipulated and rendered using Blender.
Functy 724 by Tony Ralano
Check out the original on deviantart. Tony’s gallery also contains a whole load of his other amazing creations. I plan to post up some more of Tony’s images over the next few weeks.
Interactive Functy function viewing
One of the obvious but neat consequences of having the new STL export functionality from Functy is that the generated models can be imported in to other things. One of these things… well, p3d.in provides a clever HTML5 in-browser model renderer, which means the models can now be rendered interactively directly into this site (or indeed any others). Check out this version of a ball made from string, generated as a couple of curve functions in Functy. Just click and drag to rotate the model. And if you like it, you can even print a copy in 3D!
Rendering tubes with shaders
One of the main aims with Functy has always been to allow functions to be rendered using shaders on the GPU and using the function derivative to generate normals. This should be faster than rendering on the CPU. Defining the normals mathematically should also give more accurate results, and since we have the functions to play around with, it just seems like the sensible thing to do.
This presented a bit of a challenge for the new curve functions though. As is so often the case when using shaders, the problem is one of parallelism. If you have a function, the position of each vector in the model should be independent of the others and therefore a prime target for parallelism. With a curve you have the path of the curve and the radius at a particular point determined mathematically as long as you have the position along the curve, s and the rotation around the curve p given to you. However, what isn’t necessarily pre-determined is the orientation of the curve.
To explain this a bit further, consider the curve in the diagram below. Notice how the vectors perpendicular to the curve change direction as you move along the curve. These vectors are used to define the thickness of the curve at a particular point. In two-dimensions this is fine, as there’s no ambiguity about which direction these vectors should be pointing in.
Normal along a curve in 2D.
However, lets now consider this in 3D. Suddenly these vectors can rotate around the axis of the curve, and while the vector must always lie within the plane perpendicular to the curve, there’s still an infinite number of possible directions that the vector can point.
Normal along a curve in 3D.
In Functy, we use all of these directions, because the p variable defines a full rotation around the curve, so that it becomes a tube (rather than a line). But we still need to decide which direction the zero angle should point.
Some how or other a choice has to be made for this. There are a number of possibilities. We could set it randomly. However, this means there will be no consistency from one piece of the curve to the next, and if the cross section isn’t a circle, will result in a random twisting of the curve. This would look rubbish, so it’s not an option.
In my 3D Celtic Knot program I came up against exactly the same problem. Since it was essential for the start and end of a curve to match up exactly, I used an iterative approach there. For each piece, the rotation between the previous and next point on the curve is calculated and the perpendicular vector transformed by this in order to establish its new position. At the end of the curve an adjustment is made to ensure pairs of curves will always fit perfectly together. This is possible because the maximum adjustment needed will never be more than 2π/x radians where x is the number of segments that make up the cross section of the curve (called the Radial Accuracy in Functy).
However, unfortunately this technique can’t be easily parallelised since the orientation of each piece depends on the last, meaning that it couldn’t be translated easily into shader code. For Functy I therefore needed a different solution.
Luckily for me this isn’t a new problem, and the solution came in the form of Frenet Frames. A Frenet Frame is an orthogonal set of axes that’s defined based on the curvature and torsion of the curve at a particular point. Since it’s (in general) canonically defined at each point on the curve, it can be calculated independently from the other points, by calculating the derivatives and second-derivatives of the curve. More specifically, it requires that the tangent, normal and binormal vectors of the curve be calculated. There’s a decent explanation in the Wikipedia section “Other expressions of the frame”, and there’s also a neat Wolfram Demonstration too.
Since these three vectors can be calculated using the derivative of the curve, there’s no need to iterate along the curve, which makes it perfect for calculation using shaders. This is now implemented in Functy, and it seems to work pretty well. On my laptop, which has a decent but not mindblowing graphics card, animating a Frenet curve on the GPU using shader code is considerably faster than using the CPU.
The only problem is that this method has a tendency to generate curves with twists in. That is, the axis can make sudden rotations around the direction of the curve. In general this isn’t a problem, but can cause the curve to ‘pinch’ if the resolution of the pieces is too low. Below is a particularly extreme example.
Twist in curve due to Frenet frame rotation.
Usually it’s not as bad as this, but it’s a shame nonetheless. For the benefit to be had from parallelisation I’m willing to live with it.
Working Curves
The latest version of Functy in the repository now has a (roughly) working version of the curve rendering code. This allows a cylindrical coordinate cross section to be extruded along the length of a parametrically defined curve. In other words, something like a tube.
The code is fairly incomplete. Trying to define functional colours will cause a crash, and vertices are all positioned on the CPU, so that animation isn’t particularly efficient. Both of these should be fixed soon, including GPU rendering of the entire curve.
Here’s a brief video demo of this early code to give a flavour of how it can be used.
The Art of Good Design?
Designing a really good library is a difficulty task. Since around August last year I’ve been writing a program called Knot, which I also recently open sourced. This makes extensive use of 3D Bezier tubes to render Celtic Knots, and having written the code for this, it seemed sensible to try to integrate it into Functy, to allow arbitrary tubes to be rendered using curved cylindrical coordinates. So, that made it a perfect candidate - or so I thought - for implementing as a library. This way, improvements from the Knot code could be easily merged into Functy and vice versa.
Designing the library turned out to be tricky, especially the task of managing and animating all of the curves. I figured that if I put the effort in to getting the library right, it would make the process of integrating into Functy that much easier.
I was wrong. After painstakingly implementing everything needed in the library, I tried to integrate it into Functy, only to realise that Functy already has all of the management and animation functionality needed. Given that I wrote the Functy code, you’d have thought I might have know this.
The consequence is that I’ve ended up dropping all of the curve library methods and cut and paste the relevant code straight in to Functy. If I hadn’t done this Functy would have ended up with two totally separate lists of functions, two separate animation steps and two separate update steps. It would have been a mess.
It’s taken longer to modify the curve code for Functy as a result, but the final structure is much better. Unfortunately it also means the library is now redundant. I’ll have to find some other use for it.
There’s a design moral to this story I’m sure, but I’m not exactly sure what it is. I’ve ended up with a nice clean library implementation that doesn’t work for what it was designed for, a new implementation that doesn’t use this library, and what seems like a lot of wasted time. It feels like somewhere something went a bit wrong. At least Functy can now render curves, so even if it was a circuitous route, maybe the journey wasn’t entirely wasted after all.
Curvy Screenshots
The Curves library is currently being integrated into Functy in order to provide parametric tubes to be added to function scenes. To give an idea about the sort of results this might allow, here are a few screenshots taken from the development version.
- Bezier spring with undulating radius.
- Bezier spring with fixed radius.
- Bezier spring with fixed radius using Ubuntu.
In all of these images the tubes follow a path constructed from cubic Bezier curves:
((((1 - a)3) × P1) + (3 × ((1 - a)2) × a × D1) + (3 × (1 - a) × (a2) × D2) + ((a3) × P2))
where a is the parametric variable, P1, P2, D1 and D2 are the control points. It’s a bit crazy using Bezier curves for this since the library could handle a spiral far more easily, but it was just a product of the way the demo developed. For the first image the function used for the radius was the following.
((2 - cos((((s × a) + o) × 6 × π)) + (sin ((12 × p)) / 5)) / 2).
Here a and p are the parametric variables for the position along the curve and angle around the radius respectively. The values s and o are offsets and scaling factors that are changed for each quarter-circle segment of the spring.
The intention is to allow these functions to be entered directly into Functy to generate curves such as these. There’s still quite a bit of work to be done. Although the Curves library is coming along, this still needs to be integrated with Functy, and the shader code for these parametric tubes also needs to be implemented (it’s certainly possible, but I’m anticipating problems!).
