Korpitsch,T., Takahashi,S., Gröller,E., Wu,H.
Abstract:
3D mesh unfolding transforms a 3D mesh model into one or multiple 2D planar patches. The technique is widely used to fabricate papercrafts, where 3D objects can be reconstructed from printed paper or paper-like materials. The applicability, visual quality, and stability of such papercraft productions is still challenging since it requires a reasonable formulation of these factors. In this paper, we unfold a 3D mesh into a single connected 2D patch. We also introduce glue tabs as additional indicators in order to provide users with extra space to apply glue for better reconstruction quality. To improve space efficiency, we do not apply glue tabs on every edge, while still guaranteeing the stability of the constructed paper model. A minimum spanning tree (MST) describes possible unfoldings, whereas simulated annealing optimisation is used to find an optimal unfolding. Our approach allows to unfold 3D triangular meshes into single 2D patches without shape distortions, and employing only a small number of glue tabs. A visual indicator scheme is also incorporated as a post-process to guide users during the model reconstruction process. Finally, we qualitatively evaluate the applicability of the presented approach in comparison to the conventional technique and the achieved results.