Patent ID: 8085266

Claim:
A method of creating a three-dimensional image, comprising: importing data relating to a two-dimensional image; chaining segments of the image into contiguous curves; forming loops from the contiguous curves; creating at least one subset of loops; contouring the at least one subset of loops to form a contoured area, wherein contouring comprises modifying at least one of amount of rotation, radius, or surface center; triangulating the contoured area, wherein triangulating the contoured area comprises selecting curves from the contoured area, offsetting the curves by a uniform distance and creating triangles between the offsets; generating a hidden-line mesh to approximate the contoured area; projecting geometries of the contoured area onto a surface using the hidden-line mesh, wherein projecting the geometries comprises projecting the vertices of the triangulated contoured area; smoothing the image, wherein smoothing the image comprises recontouring portions of the mesh by drawing a closed curve around the portion of the mesh and redoing the contour locally.