Local and Hierarchical Refinement for Subdivision Gradient Meshes

Gradient mesh design tools allow users to create detailed scalable images, traditionally through the creation and manipulation of a (dense) mesh with regular rectangular topology. Through recent advances it is now possible to allow gradient meshes to have arbitrary manifold topology, using a modified Catmull‐Clark subdivision scheme to define the resultant geometry and colour [ LKSD17 ]. We present two novel methods to allow local and hierarchical refinement of both colour and geometry for such subdivision gradient meshes. Our methods leverage the mesh properties that the particular subdivision scheme ensures. In both methods, the artists enjoy all the standard capabilities of manipulating the mesh and the associated colour gradients at the coarsest level as well as locally at refined levels. Further novel features include interpolation of both position and colour of the vertices of the input meshes, local detail follows coarser‐level edits, and support for sharp colour transitions, all at any level in the hierarchy offered by subdivision.