The next step is to map realistic textures onto the geometric fish
display models. The most important step in the texture mapping process
is to derive texture coordinates which map the digital image of the
real fish onto the 3D surface of the corresponding display model. Once
the texture coordinates are determined, the rest of the texture
mapping procedure can be carried out via a simple function call in any
commercially available 3D graphics software package that supports
texture mapping; e.g. OpenGL 
,
RenderMan , etc.
Mapping irregular texture images onto irregular 3D geometric shapes is not a trivial problem because the correspondence between the 2D texture coordinates and the 3D object coordinates is difficult to determine automatically. There is currently no general-purpose software to accomplish this task. In our work, we have developed a new interactive tool for effectively obtaining texture coordinates from irregular images.
| Xiaoyuan Tu | January 1996 |