# ConTesse: Accurate Occluding Contours for Subdivision Surfaces

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06006 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06006/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Nov 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [WIR3D: Visually-Informed and Geometry-Aware 3D Shape Abstraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04813/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper proposes a method for computing the visible occluding contours of subdivision surfaces. The paper first introduces new theory for contour visibility of smooth surfaces. Necessary and sufficient conditions are introduced for when a sampled occluding contour is valid, that is, when it may be assigned consistent visibility. Previous methods do not guarantee these conditions, which helps explain why smooth contour visibility has been such a challenging problem in the past. The paper then proposes an algorithm that, given a subdivision surface, finds sampled contours satisfying these conditions, and then generates a new triangle mesh matching the given occluding contours. The contours of the output triangle mesh may then be rendered with standard non-photorealistic rendering algorithms, using the mesh for visibility computation. The method can be applied to any triangle mesh, by treating it as the base mesh of a subdivision surface.