The 3D Motorcycle Complex for Structured Volume Decomposition

Abstract

The so-called motorcycle graph has been employed in recent years for various purposes in the context of structured and aligned block decomposition of 2D shapes and 2-manifold surfaces. Applications are in the fields of surface parametrization, spline space construction, semi-structured quad mesh generation, or geometry data compression. We describe a generalization of this motorcycle graph concept to the three-dimensional volumetric setting. Through careful extensions aware of topological intricacies of this higher-dimensional setting, we are able to guarantee important block decomposition properties also in this case. We describe algorithms for the construction of this 3D motorcycle complex on the basis of either hexahedral meshes or seamless volumetric parametrizations. Its utility is illustrated on examples in hexahedral mesh generation and volumetric T-spline construction.