Abstract
This paper presents a new efficient texture-mapping algorithm for polygonal meshes. Texture coordinates are assigned to the vertices of the mesh using the variational interpolation technique. For each patch to be mapped, the algorithm first samples equidistantly the boundaries of the patch. In order to decrease distortion, the patch is further sampled as uniformly as possible while its texture domain is correspondingly sampled. The variational interpolation technique is then invoked to yield a parameterization of the patch. The experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm has a great number of potential applications in texture mapping and surface modeling.