Concept of Skeleton Texture Mapping

This article introduces an idea for novel way of mapping textures onto a surface of 3D model. Our technique is based on two interlocking mappings, the first one maps surface vertices onto computed skeleton and the second maps surrounding area of each skeleton segment into a rectangle with dimensions based on surface properties around this segment. Furthermore, these rectangles are packed into a squared texture by approximately solving an optimization problem which seems to be NP-complete. With our technique, we are able to map the texture onto the surface without any precomputed or stored texture coordinates. Our texture mapping approach is also suitable for surfaces with topology non-homotopic to a sphere.