Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866918501736775680 |
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| author | Dodik, Ana Yu, Isabella Chandra, Kartik Ragan-Kelley, Jonathan Tenenbaum, Joshua Sitzmann, Vincent Solomon, Justin |
| author_facet | Dodik, Ana Yu, Isabella Chandra, Kartik Ragan-Kelley, Jonathan Tenenbaum, Joshua Sitzmann, Vincent Solomon, Justin |
| contents | Impossible objects, geometric constructions that humans can perceive but that cannot exist in real life, have been a topic of intrigue in visual arts, perception, and graphics, yet no satisfying computer representation of such objects exists. Previous work embeds impossible objects in 3D, cutting them or twisting/bending them in the depth axis. Cutting an impossible object changes its local geometry at the cut, which can hamper downstream graphics applications, such as smoothing, while bending makes it difficult to relight the object. Both of these can invalidate geometry operations, such as distance computation. As an alternative, we introduce Meschers, meshes capable of representing impossible constructions akin to those found in M.C. Escher's woodcuts. Our representation has a theoretical foundation in discrete exterior calculus and supports the use-cases above, as we demonstrate in a number of example applications. Moreover, because we can do discrete geometry processing on our representation, we can inverse-render impossible objects. We also compare our representation to cut and bend representations of impossible objects. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_14960 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects Dodik, Ana Yu, Isabella Chandra, Kartik Ragan-Kelley, Jonathan Tenenbaum, Joshua Sitzmann, Vincent Solomon, Justin Graphics Computational Geometry Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Impossible objects, geometric constructions that humans can perceive but that cannot exist in real life, have been a topic of intrigue in visual arts, perception, and graphics, yet no satisfying computer representation of such objects exists. Previous work embeds impossible objects in 3D, cutting them or twisting/bending them in the depth axis. Cutting an impossible object changes its local geometry at the cut, which can hamper downstream graphics applications, such as smoothing, while bending makes it difficult to relight the object. Both of these can invalidate geometry operations, such as distance computation. As an alternative, we introduce Meschers, meshes capable of representing impossible constructions akin to those found in M.C. Escher's woodcuts. Our representation has a theoretical foundation in discrete exterior calculus and supports the use-cases above, as we demonstrate in a number of example applications. Moreover, because we can do discrete geometry processing on our representation, we can inverse-render impossible objects. We also compare our representation to cut and bend representations of impossible objects. |
| title | Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects |
| topic | Graphics Computational Geometry Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14960 |