Modeling Chinese calligraphy reliefs from one image

Abstract Chinese calligraphy is one of the most representative art forms in China. Modeling Chinese calligraphy reliefs from 2D images has extensive application in art exhibitions and architectural decorations. Most existing approaches produce 3D-like effects of the calligraphy fonts, but lack flexible shape manipulation of the height field. The appearance of the resulting relief is thus limited. In this paper, we propose a mesh-based modeling system to generate Chinese calligraphy reliefs. Such a relief is constructed by combining a homogeneous height field and an inhomogeneous height field together via a nonlinear compression function. We provide several intuitive control parameters to allow users to interactively adjust the appearance of the relief. Experiments with a range of models show that the proposed approach is effective in producing stylized Chinese calligraphy reliefs.