Randomly Reducing Objects to Spheres
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This Demonstration shows how you can visualize an object by centering spheres at randomly sampled points from the object. An interesting exercise is determining how many points need generally be sampled and what color and sizing schemes work best for recognizing the nature of the object displayed.
Contributed by: Seth J. Chandler (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Snapshot 1: a randomly sampled and randomly colored standing human
Snapshot 2: a pink human head derived from 100 randomly sampled points
Snapshot 3: a blue seated woman derived from 240 randomly sampled points
The data from which the random sample of points are drawn is itself a random sample of points taken from freely available models available at www.klicker.de.
It would be interesting to create physical sculpture using this method using, for example, a three-dimensional printer.
Permanent Citation
"Randomly Reducing Objects to Spheres"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/RandomlyReducingObjectsToSpheres/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: March 7 2011