Suggestive Contours for Conveying Shape

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH), July 2003

Doug DeCarlo, Adam Finkelstein,
Szymon Rusinkiewicz, Anthony Santella

The first image shows contours alone, while the second image shows both contours and suggestive contours. Notice that the latter help convey shape.

In this paper, we describe a non-photorealistic rendering system that conveys shape using lines. We go beyond contours and creases by developing a new type of line to draw: the suggestive contour. Suggestive contours are lines drawn on clearly visible parts of the surface, where a true contour would first appear with a minimal change in viewpoint. We provide two methods for calculating suggestive contours, including an algorithm that finds the zero crossings of the radial curvature. We show that suggestive contours can be drawn consistently with true contours, because they anticipate and extend them. We present a variety of results, arguing that these images convey shape more effectively than contour alone.

SIGGRAPH 2003 paper

Project page (including a sample software implementation)
Rutgers project page
Followup paper on Interactive Rendering of Suggestive Contours with Temporal Coherence

Doug DeCarlo, Adam Finkelstein, Szymon Rusinkiewicz, and Anthony Santella.
"Suggestive Contours for Conveying Shape."
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH) 22(3):848-855, July 2003.

@article{DeCarlo:2003:SCF,
   author = "Doug DeCarlo and Adam Finkelstein and Szymon Rusinkiewicz and Anthony
      Santella",
   title = "Suggestive Contours for Conveying Shape",
   journal = "ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)",
   year = "2003",
   month = jul,
   volume = "22",
   number = "3",
   pages = "848--855"
}