Simulation and Rendering of Opus Palladium 3D Mosaics

Abstract

Mosaic sculptures are a form of art where the sculpture is made from a collection of individual elements called tiles which are distributed over the surface of a given 3D shape. To add expressiveness, artists distribute the tiles following a high-level design over the shape, in order to emphasize some features. In the method known by mosaicists as opus palladium, or simply "crazy paving", tiles with irregular shapes are used, improving the expressivity of the final result. In this work, we present a method to simulate this kind of 3D mosaic by representing tiles as Voronoi polygons computed from a distribution of points on the surface of the 3D object. Previous work on this topic have used only square-shaped tiles. Special mosaic-like effects are obtained with the help from texture maps, which control the high-level design of the tiles.