Modeling seashells

Deborah R. Fowler¹ ², Hans Meinhardt³, and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz¹

¹Department of Computer Science
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4

²Department of Computer Science
University of Regina
Canada

³Max-Planck-Institut
für Entwicklungsbiologie
7400 Tübingen, Germany

Abstract

This paper presents a method for modeling seashells, suitable for image synthesis purposes. It combines a geometric description of shell shapes with an activator-inhibitor model of pigmentation patterns on shell surfaces. The technique is illustrated using models of selected shells found in nature.

Keywords: realistic image synthesis, modeling of natural phenomena, seashell, logarithmic helico-spiral, sweep representation, reaction-diffusion pattern model.

Reference

Deborah R. Fowler, Hans Meinhardt, and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz. Modeling seashells. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH '92 (Chicago, Illinois, July 26-31, 1992), In Computer Graphics, 26, 2, (July 1992), ACM SIGGRAPH, New York, pp. 379-387.

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