Abstract: The problem of planar mapping and deformation is central in computer graphics. This paper presents a framework for adapting general, smooth, function bases for building provably good planar mappings. The term "good" in this context means the map has no fold-overs (injective), is smooth, and has low isometric or conformal distortion.

Existing methods that use mesh-based schemes are able to achieve injectivity and/or control distortion, but fail to create smooth mappings, unless they use a prohibitively large number of elements, which slows them down. Meshless methods are usually smooth by construction, yet they are not able to avoid fold-overs and/or control distortion.

Our approach constrains the linear deformation spaces induced by popular smooth basis functions, such as B-Splines, Gaussian and Thin-Plate Splines, at a set of collocation points, using specially tailored convex constraints that prevent fold-overs and high distortion at these points. Our analysis then provides the required density of collocation points and/or constraint type, which guarantees that the map is injective and meets the distortion constraints over the entire domain of interest.

We demonstrate that our method is interactive at reasonably complicated settings and compares favorably to other state-of-the-art mesh and meshless planar deformation methods.