Merging Polyhedral Shapes with Scattered Features

The paper presents a technique for merging two genus 0 polyhedra. Merging establishes correspondences between vertices of the models as a first step in a 3D morphing process. The technique allows for the specification of scattered features to be aligned. This is accomplished in three steps: First, initial embeddings of the polyhedra on unit spheres are computed. Second, the embeddings are deformed such that user defined features (vertices) coincide on the spheres. Third, an overlay of the subdivisions is computed and the aligned vertices are fused in the merged model.