Geometric Distance Fields of Plane Curves

Abstract

This paper introduces a geometric generalization of signed distance fields for plane curves. We propose to store simplified geometric proxies to the curve at every sample. These proxies are constructed based on the differential geometric quantities of the represented curve and are used for queries such as closest point and distance calculations. We investigate the theoretical approximation order of these constructs and provide empirical comparisons between geometric and algebraic distance fields of higher order. We apply our results to font representation and rendering.