Neural Geometry Processing via Spherical Neural Surfaces

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Main Authors: Romy Williamson, Niloy J. Mitra
Format: Artículo Open Access
Published: Wiley 2025
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author Romy Williamson
Niloy J. Mitra
author_facet Romy Williamson
Niloy J. Mitra
Romy Williamson
Niloy J. Mitra
collection Wiley Open Access
contents Neural Geometry Processing via Spherical Neural Surfaces Romy Williamson Niloy J. Mitra Computer Graphics Forum AbstractNeural surfaces (e.g., neural map encoding, deep implicit, and neural radiance fields) have recently gained popularity because of their generic structure (e.g., multi‐layer perceptron) and easy integration with modern learning‐based setups. Traditionally, we have a rich toolbox of geometry processing algorithms designed for polygonal meshes to analyze and operate on surface geometry. Without an analogous toolbox, neural representations are typically discretized and converted into a mesh, before applying any geometry processing algorithm. This is unsatisfactory and, as we demonstrate, unnecessary. In this work, we propose a spherical neural surface representation for genus‐0 surfaces and demonstrate how to compute core geometric operators directly on this representation. Namely, we estimate surface normals and first and second fundamental forms of the surface, as well as compute surface gradient, surface divergence and Laplace Beltrami operator on scalar/vector fields defined on the surface. Our representation is fully seamless, overcoming a key limitation of similar explicit representations such as Neural Surface Maps [MAKM21]. These operators, in turn, enable geometry processing directly on the neural representations without any unnecessary meshing. We demonstrate illustrative applications in (neural) spectral analysis, heat flow and mean curvature flow, and evaluate robustness to isometric shape variations. We propose theoretical formulations and validate their numerical estimates, against analytical estimates, mesh‐based baselines, and neural alternatives, where available. By systematically linking neural surface representations with classical geometry processing algorithms, we believe this work can become a key ingredient in enabling neural geometry processing. Code is available via the project webpage. 10.1111/cgf.70021 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
doi_str_mv 10.1111/cgf.70021
format Artículo Open Access
id wiley_oa_10_1111_cgf_70021
institution Wiley Open Access
license_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
publishDate 2025
publisher Wiley
record_format wiley_oa
spellingShingle Neural Geometry Processing via Spherical Neural Surfaces
Romy Williamson
Niloy J. Mitra
Computer Graphics Forum
Neural Geometry Processing via Spherical Neural Surfaces Romy Williamson Niloy J. Mitra Computer Graphics Forum AbstractNeural surfaces (e.g., neural map encoding, deep implicit, and neural radiance fields) have recently gained popularity because of their generic structure (e.g., multi‐layer perceptron) and easy integration with modern learning‐based setups. Traditionally, we have a rich toolbox of geometry processing algorithms designed for polygonal meshes to analyze and operate on surface geometry. Without an analogous toolbox, neural representations are typically discretized and converted into a mesh, before applying any geometry processing algorithm. This is unsatisfactory and, as we demonstrate, unnecessary. In this work, we propose a spherical neural surface representation for genus‐0 surfaces and demonstrate how to compute core geometric operators directly on this representation. Namely, we estimate surface normals and first and second fundamental forms of the surface, as well as compute surface gradient, surface divergence and Laplace Beltrami operator on scalar/vector fields defined on the surface. Our representation is fully seamless, overcoming a key limitation of similar explicit representations such as Neural Surface Maps [MAKM21]. These operators, in turn, enable geometry processing directly on the neural representations without any unnecessary meshing. We demonstrate illustrative applications in (neural) spectral analysis, heat flow and mean curvature flow, and evaluate robustness to isometric shape variations. We propose theoretical formulations and validate their numerical estimates, against analytical estimates, mesh‐based baselines, and neural alternatives, where available. By systematically linking neural surface representations with classical geometry processing algorithms, we believe this work can become a key ingredient in enabling neural geometry processing. Code is available via the project webpage. 10.1111/cgf.70021 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
title Neural Geometry Processing via Spherical Neural Surfaces
topic Computer Graphics Forum
url https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cgf.70021