Eric Landreneau
" Icosahedral Extrusion Flower "
Digital print, 2003
Eric Landreneau is a graduate student pursuing his Master's degree in Computer Science. He is currently working on topological modeling research with Dr. Ergun Akleman and Dr. John Keyser at Texas A&M University.
"This shape resulted from playing around with an icosahedral extrusion procedure that I wrote for research purposes. I wanted to create a more organic shape than a typical icosahedron, to show that the extrusion can be used to create a variety of shapes that would otherwise be difficult for artists to make.
"A single icosahedral extrusion method was used repeatedly on a dodecahedron to generate this shape. Using a three-tiered system to describe the extrusion, a shape is extruded from a base face, attempting to preserve edge lengths and dihedral angles. With tier heights of 1,1,1 and a dihedral angle of 138 degrees, this operation will generate a regular icosahedron from a regular triangle. By altering the tier heights and dihedral angle of the extrusion, a 'petal' shape can be created. This results in the flower-like structure seen here; only a few mouse clicks were required to generate this complex shape, which would otherwise take a great deal of effort to model."
More information on Dr. Ergun Akleman's research can be found at http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/ergun/index.html . More images that Eric has created can be found at his homepage, http://students.cs.tamu.edu/ebl4767/ . Eric can be contacted by email at eland@tamu.edu