It’s that time of year when we can have our socks knocked off from new technologies discussed and revealed at the Siggraph conference. I always look forward to getting the “drool kind” of excited watching great white papers come in. The best technology examples from Siggraph always seem to parallel magic, more than science.

an interactive system for manual quad remeshing that provides the user with a high degree of control while avoiding the tediousness involved in existing manual tools.

Data Driven Interactive Quadrangulation certainly fits in that category.

Data-Driven Interactive Quadrangulation has been conditionally accepted as a white paper for SIGGRAPH 2015. The paper has been floating around in one form or another since 2013 – Sketch-based generation and editing of quad meshes.

The idea comes from research by Giorgio MarciasKenshi TakayamaNico PietroniDaniele PanozzoOlga Sorkine-HornungEnrico PuppoPaolo Cignoni.

The system allows you to suggest a polygon flow direction by drawing a single line, or series of lines. It will then create retopology based on that suggestion drawing from a database of retopology examples.

Retopology is a common part of 3D workflow these days, and while retopology tools are pretty sophisticated in either host 3D applications, or third party tools, something like Data Driven Retopology would mean a huge advancement for that whole workflow.