TPainter inflation method

> After reading through this a couple of times, it seems to me that a
> potentially simpler and quicker method might be to build a heightmap
> by accumulating successive logical ANDs of increasingly offset BitBlts
> of the original image, so that heightmap pixels with the greatest
> planar distance to the edges of the original image would accumulate
> the highest values.  This would take a number of BitBlt's to
> accomplish, but the offset of each pass could possibly be increased
> more quickly to reduce the number of passes.  Once the heightmap was
> built, it would then be interpreted into a triangular mesh (somehow)
> and textured with the original drawing.
>
> This is probably not an original thought, has anyone seen this kind of
> thing implemented somewhere else?

> David Faught wrote:
>> I've been re-reading Takeo Igarashi's SigGraph 1999 paper on Teddy
>> where he describes the inflation method that TPainter 's is based on.
>> TPainter uses a slightly different approach, making use of the  
>> outline
>> of a finished 2D drawing as opposed to Teddy using paint strokes, but
>> the actual inflation method looks similar.
>
> It is the same.
>
>> After reading through this a couple of times, it seems to me that a
>> potentially simpler and quicker method might be to build a heightmap
>> by accumulating successive logical ANDs of increasingly offset  
>> BitBlts
>> of the original image, so that heightmap pixels with the greatest
>> planar distance to the edges of the original image would accumulate
>> the highest values.  This would take a number of BitBlt's to
>> accomplish, but the offset of each pass could possibly be increased
>> more quickly to reduce the number of passes.  Once the heightmap was
>> built, it would then be interpreted into a triangular mesh (somehow)
>> and textured with the original drawing.
>> This is probably not an original thought, has anyone seen this  
>> kind of
>> thing implemented somewhere else?
>
> Only indirectly. I have seen (what I would call) a "dual" version  
> of this algorithm for thinning and skeleton generation but not  
> exactly what you're describing. It would be interesting to see if  
> that has better performance characteristics than the current  
> algorithm or if it has other advantages.