Ilic S Fua P 2006 Deformable 3D models can be represented either as traditional explicit surfaces, such as triangulated meshes, or as implicit surfaces. Explicit surfaces are widely accepted because they are simple to deform and render, but fitting them involves minimizing a nondifferentiable distance function. By contrast, implicit surfaces allow fitting by minimizing a differentiable algebraic distance, but are harder to meaningfully deform and render. Here, we propose a method that combines the strength of both approaches. It relies on a technique that can turn a completely arbitrary triangulated mesh, such as one taken from the Web, into an implicit surface that closely approximates it and can deform in tandem with it. This allows both automated algorithms to take advantage of the attractive properties of implicit surfaces for fitting purposes and people to use standard deformation tools they feel comfortable for interaction and animation purposes. We demonstrate the applicability of our technique to modeling the human upper-body, including face, neck, shoulders, and ears, from noisy stereo and silhouette data. application/pdf https://sonar.ch/global/documents/150669 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1109/TPAMI.2006.37 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/16468628 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence. - 2006 Algorithms Artificial Intelligence Computer Simulation Image Enhancement Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted Imaging, Three-Dimensional Information Storage and Retrieval Models, Theoretical Pattern Recognition, Automated Surface Properties Implicit meshes for surface reconstruction. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501