Ribbons: A representation for point clouds

Abstract

Point clouds are usually represented either globally, as surfaces, or locally, as sets of points with small neighbourhoods. We propose an intermediate representation, called ribbons, which is obtained by partitioning a point cloud into one-dimensional strips. This representation is well suited to the placement of strokes in non-photorealistic rendering, and can be visualized efficiently using quad strips. Methods for performing hatching, cross-hatching, and silhouette renderings are presented. Ribbons also allow for the application of curve-based operations to the point cloud.