Geometry, Surfaces, Curves, Polyhedra

Written by Paul Bourke

The following is a dictionary of various topics in geometry the author has explored or simply documented over the years. Many of the topics include source code illustrating how to solve various geometric problems, or to assist others recreating the geometric forms presented.

Please note that I am available as a consultant on matters relating to geometry, developing geometric algorithms, exploring new forms, creating high quality graphics, animations, solving geometric problems either in closed form or numerically and so on.

Notes on polygons and meshes
Includes Surface (polygon) simplification, Clipping a polygonal facet with an arbitrary plane, Surface Relaxation and Smoothing of polygonal data, Mesh crumpling, splitting polygons, two sided facets, polygon types, tests for clockwise and concavity, clipping line to polygons, area of a 3D polygon, area of general polygons, determining inside/outside test, intersection of a line and a facet, Eulers numbers.

Notes on points, lines and planes
Includes calculations for the distance between points, lines and planes. The intersection between 2 lines in 2D and 3D, the intersection of a line with a plane. The intersection of two and three planes.

Notes on circles, cylinders and spheres
Includes equations and terminology. Equation of the circle through 3 points and sphere thought 4 points. The intersection of a line and a sphere (or a circle). Intersection of two circles on a plane and two spheres in 3D. Distributing Points on a Sphere. The area of multiple intersecting circles. Creating a plane/disk perpendicular to a line segment. Modelling with spheres and cylinders, including facet approximation to a sphere and cylinder, rounded boxes, pipes, and modelling with spheres.

The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language. D. E. Knuth, 1967

Transformations and projections
Methods for mapping points on a spherical surface onto a plane, stereographic and cylindrical (including Mercator) projections. Includes Aitoff map projection: Conversion to/from longitude/latitude (spherical map). Transformations on the plane. Cartesian, Cylindrical, and Spherical coordinate systems. Euler angles and coordinate transformations. Converting between left and right coordinate systems. Classification of projections from 3D to 2D and specific examples of oblique projections. Planar (stretching) distortion in the plane. Anamorphic projections and Mappings in the Complex Plane (Otherwise known as Conformal maps). 3D projection: Transforming 3D world coordinates into 2D screen coordinates. Convert spherical projection into a cylindrical projection.

Tiling textures
An introduction to texture tiling using characteristics of the texture itself. A general method is presented that converts any texture into one that tiles without seams. Illustrates the most common texture mapping methods in use by rendering applications. The mathematics of how to map a rectangular texture onto a sphere, creating a textured mesh in OpenGL and how to correct for polar distortion of texture maps on spheres.

Texture library

Tiling on the plane and more recently Tiling tricurves
Includes Truchet tiling in 2D and 3D, Regular pentagonal tiles, block tessellation, weaving, and more. Non periodic (aperiodic) tiling of the plane: Methods of tiling that are never periodic, for example, Penrose tiles, Danzer tiles, Chair tiles, Trilobite tiles, Pinwheel tiles. Most of the tiles are presented accurately and large enough to be printed and cut out. Hexagonal tiling and SHM Calculator Including MacOS-X and Linux software for experimenting with transformation in the Spiral Harmonic Mosaic. Relationship between base 7 and base 10: Exploration by Paolo Di Pasquale © 1988-2012

Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean universe - which stands continuously open to our gaze, but which cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. Galileo (1623)

Contouring Algorithm
Description of an efficient contouring algorithm as it appeared in Byte magazine. (Byte Magazine, 1987) and a more general approach for arbitrary contour planes and polygonal meshes.

Polygonising a scalar field
Otherwise known as marching cubes and marching tetrahedrons.

HyperSpace
Notes on 4 dimensional geometry, including an old Macintosh 4 dimensional geometry viewer and manual. List of 4D platonic solids and the coordinates for 4D polyhedra.

There are holes in the sky. Where the rain gets in. But they're ever so small. That's why the rain is thin. Spike Milligan

Of cube nature
SGI logo, Wiffle cube, Rounded cube, Tooth surface, Horned cube, Tangle surface

Of spherical and elliptical nature
Models of sports balls, Prolate sphereoid, Cymbelloid, Superellipse, Superellipsoid, Capsules, Eggs, Melons, Peanuts, Cassini Oval, Ellipse, Apple, Baseball curve, Cassinoid, Cassinian Ellipse.

Circumference of an ellipse
The circumference of an ellipse, one might think this was a "solved" problem, noting could be further from the truth.

Of toroidal nature
Torus, Supertorus, Klein bottle, Möbius strip, Elliptic Torus, Limpet Torus, Gumdrop torus, Figure 8 Torus, 2-Torus, Saddle torus, Kinky Torus, Bow tie, Triaxial Tritorus, Triaxial Hexatorus, Twisted pipe, Double torus, Bow curve, Bretzel, Pretzel, Pisot triaxial

Of spiral nature
Horn, Cresent, Sea shells, Springs, Dini surface, Equiangular spiral, Parabolic spiral, Hyperbolic spiral, Fermats spiral, Lituus Spiral, Archimedes spiral, Sinusoidal spiral, Square Archimedes spiral, Cornu spiral, Tanh spiral, Coth spiral, Helix, Clothoid, Eulers Spiral

You may say I'm a hacker, But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will code as one.

Waterman Polyhedra
Cylinder intersections
Plexagons
Platonic solids
Verrill
Time Star
Polar + Star sphere
Parallelohedron
SuperShape
80 Polyhedra
To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour. William Blake
Photos by Gayla Chandler
Rhombic Triacontahedron
Build your own
Kuen's
Implicit Surfaces
Polyhedra data files
Spherical Harmonics
Inverse Truchet
Pseudosphere
Harmonograph
Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. Thomas Jefferson
Borg
Bifolia
Twisted plane
Twisted Fano
Cross Hole
Chair
Fano planes
Tranguloid Trefoil
Chladni plates
Nose
Aesthetic delight lies somewhere between boredom and confusion. E. H. Gombrick
Witch hat
Slipper
Decocube
Strophoid
2D Bow curve
Cross Cap
Steiner
Hunt
Stiletto
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.
Barth Decic
Twisted Triaxial
Mitre
Nodal cubic
Boy
Klein Cycloid
Jet
Heart surfaces
Pilz
Tear drop
"I know what you're thinking about," said Tweedledum; "but it isn't so, nohow." "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't That's logic" Lewis Carroll
Tubey
Maeder's Owl
Spline curve/surface
Triaxial teardrop
Whitney umbrella
Lemniscape
Tractrix
Pseudocatenoid
Twisted heart
Piva surface
Going to war over religion is basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend. Richard Jeni
Calabi-Yau
Hexagonal Drum
OrthoCircle
Barth sextic
Folium
Devil
Swallow
P1 atomic orbital
Ghost Plane
Bent Horns
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
Catenoid minimal
Helicoid minimal
Bour minimal
Ennepers minimal
Richmond minimal
Handkerchief
Scherk minimal
Kidney
Monkey saddle
Pillow shape
I don't do drugs. If I want a rush then I get out of the chair when I'm not expecting it. Dylan Moran
Cushion
Double Cone
Catalan minimal
Fish
Cayley
2D tiles from 3D
Chainmail
dForm
There is a remote tribe that worships the number zero. Is nothing sacred? Les Dawson
Snail
The Blob
Kusner Schmitt
McMullen K3 model
Tri-Trumpet
Weird
Gerhard Miehlich
Kampyle of Eudoxus
Tetra Ellipse
Sextics
I believe the geometric proportion served the creator as an idea when He introduced the continuous generation of similar objects from similar objects. Johannes Kepler
Borromean rings
Mesh weave
Knots
Chrysanthemum
Bezier curves/surfaces
Henneburg minimal
Gerono lemniscate
Cycloid
Conic sections
If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides. Old Yiddish proverb
Butterfly curve
Viviani curve
Kappa curve
Agnesi curve
Cayleys sextic
Hypocycloid
Freeths Nephroid
Tractrix
Spherical Nephroid
Epicycloid
We should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein
Conchoid of Nicomedes
Cissoid of Diocles
Deltoid
Strophoid
Lemniscate Bernoulli
Astroid
Nephroid
Spherical Cardioid
Cardioid
Parabola
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail. Law 8, Marion Levy Jr.
Hyperbola
Diamond curve
Folium curve
Limacon
Trisectrix of Maclaurin
Reuleaux Triangle
Network
Blobbie
Bicorn curve
Glissette

I was walking down the street when I saw a dead baby ghost on the road. On reflection it might have been a handkerchief. Milton Jones

Other ...

POV-Ray: A Tool for Creating Engaging Visualisation of Geometry
Solid angle of a pixel
Reflection of a ray
Direction Cosines
Rotation of a point about an arbitrary axis
Quadric equations in x and y of degree 2
Fowler angles: Comparing angles without trigonometry

Why do kamikaze pilots wear helmets? Smacks of indecision to me. Sean Mea


Contents :  Papers, Presentations, Workshops, Exhibitions, Posters
Geometry, Surfaces, Curves, Polyhedra, Fractals, Chaos, Self similarity
Domes, Planetariums, Fisheye, Spherical mirror, Stereographics, 3D Projection
Miscellaneous: Projection, Modelling, Rendering, Photographic reconstruction
Data Formats: 3D, Audio, Image, Texture Library Fun, Puzzles, Travel
New/Updated :  Creating equirectangular images with Stellarium -- Celestia -- Google Earth
Tools for Spherical Mirror Projection
Offsite :    FaceBook, Sketchfab, YouTube, Vimeo, Shapeways

The contents of this web site are © Copyright Paul Bourke or a third party contributor where indicated. You may print or save an electronic copy of parts of this web site for your own personal use. Permission must be sought for any other use. Any source code found here may be freely used provided credits are given to the author. Purchase of credit free licenses of material found on this site can be negotiated with the author. The author can also quote for unique variations and/or higher resolution versions of the images found on this site.