A Few Good Lines: Suggestive Drawing of 3D

Models
Mario Costa Sousa
Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz

Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Abstract
We present a method for rendering 3D models in the traditional linedrawing style used in
artistic and scientific illustrations. The goal is to suggest the 3D shape of the object using a
small number of lines drawn with carefully chosen line qualities. The system combines
several known techniques into a simple yet effective nonphotorealistic line renderer. Feature
edges related to the outline and interior of a given 3D mesh are extracted, segmented, and
smoothed, yielding chains of lines with varying path, length, thickness, gaps and enclosures.
The paper includes sample renderings obtained for a variety of models.

Reference
Mario Costa Sousa and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz. A few good lines: Suggestive drawing of 3D models.
Proceedings of Eurographics 2003: Computer Graphics Forum 22 (3), pp. 381390.

EUROGRAPHICS 2003 / P. Brunet and D. Fellner

(Guest Editors)

Volume 22 (2003), Number 3

A Few Good Lines: Suggestive Drawing of 3D Models

Mario Costa Sousa

Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz

Department of Computer Science

University of Calgary, Canada

Abstract
We present a method for rendering 3D models in the traditional line-drawing style used in artistic and scientific
illustrations. The goal is to suggest the 3D shape of the objects using a small number of lines drawn with carefully
chosen line qualities. The system combines several known techniques into a simple yet effective non-photorealistic
line renderer. Feature edges related to the outline and interior of a given 3D mesh are extracted, segmented, and
smoothed, yielding chains of lines with varying path, length, thickness, gaps, and enclosures. The paper includes
sample renderings obtained for a variety of models.

1. Introduction
Humans interpret line drawings remarkably well, being able
to perceive and understand 3D object structures from very
sparse collections of lines 1 . This is the main reason for the
expressive power of line drawings that are used by artists and
scientific illustrators to effectively represent the form of 3D
objects. Such drawings are termed pure line drawings if they
consist entirely of lines that define the edges of shapes and
use no tones 2, 3 (figs. 1, 2, 3.)
In this paper, we present an automated method for direct
non-photorealistic rendering of 3D triangle meshes as line
drawings. Our system reproduces the artistic principle of
suggestion or indication, in which lines are used with economy, and the expressive power of illustrations results from
engaging the imagination of the viewer rather than revealing all details of the subject. We focus on the loose drawing
style 4 , in which lines are made with gestures that convey a
spontaneous rather than a carefully constructed look.
To recreate this style in NPR, we consider three elements
of illustrators thinking 2, 3, 4, 5 :
Shape feature selection, or where to place the lines? Before
starting to draw, illustrators thoroughly study the subject to
be rendered, focusing on the geometric forms that give the
subject its overall shape. They consider both the lines that
define the outline of the object (silhouettes and boundaries)
and features that define the interior volumes and surfaces,
such as creases, ridges, and valleys.
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003. Published by Blackwell

Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA.

Figure 1: Beethoven (rendered by our system), looking at violin

(rendered by John Blackman 6 ).

Line economy control, or how many lines to place? Illustrators control the amount of lines to be placed by following
the principle that less in a drawing is not the same as less
of a drawing 3 . Extraneous details are visually eliminated,
reducing the subject to simple lines depicting key shape features.
Linear phrasing, or how to draw the lines? A significant
challenge for the illustrator is to achieve a 3D sense in a
drawing, given that a line is by nature a 2D trace of an

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

object in a plane. To address this challenge, the illustrator

shapes and connects the feature lines of the objects in different ways, subtly varies their thickness and lengths, inflects
them, breaks them, and puts them in various relations with
respect to each other. These actions and their effects are collectively known as linear phrasing 3 .

lines with lines that are not completely closed, but nevertheless give a fair idea of the intended shape. Enclosures
are typically defined by combining the connectives shown
in Figure 4(a). They may include gaps in otherwise continuous linear sequences (fig. 2, in particular the drawings of
the plants and woman), and sequences in which the gaps are
longer than the visible segments.

Figure 3: Real pure line drawing of a potato 8 . Left: constant

weight outline with inner lines suggesting a more discoid shape.
Right: adding more weight to the bottom part of the outline and including short inner lines emerging from different locations in the
outline creates a much better visual effect that suggests a rounded
shape.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

Figure 2: Examples of real pen-and-ink pure line drawings: flowers 7 , a French horn 6 , and a woman 4

Most of the effects pertinent to linear phrasing can be

achieved by a combination of three specific elements:
(1) Weight control consists of suggesting shapes and volumes by drawing lines that are thicker at certain curvatures
and junctions. Also, parts in the focus of attention are drawn
with thicker lines. For example, observe how the weight control improves the overall shape depiction in Figure 3.
(2) Definition of connectives consists of specifying various
ways in which lines relate to each other. As shown in Figure 4, these relations occur when lines are connected together, broken by gaps, or emerge from each other. Again,
observe how the insertion of linear connectives improves
shape depiction in Figure 3.
(3) Definition of enclosures consists of indicating object out-

The term phrase comes from a musical analogy: just as the musician phrases the shape of the melodic material, so too does the
illustrator who phrases the lines 3 . The medium of choice is usually
pen-and-ink with flexible nibs, where all sorts of qualities may be
suggested at different parts of the lines track.

Figure 4: Relationships of linear connectives common in pure line

drawings 3 : (a) gaps between sections of a line; (b, c, d) line emerging from a section of another line and following a different direction;
(e, f) spaced groups of lines; (g, h) different degrees of continuity in
connected line segments.

2. Previous work
This paper falls into one of the main areas of NPR, namely
the creation of line drawings. More specifically, it deals with
the automatic rendering of geometric models using a small
number of stylized feature lines. The importance of such rendering was initially pointed out by Winkenbach and Salesin 9
and Strothotte et al. 10 . Below, we review object-space methods in which, as in our method, the NPR pipeline directly
accesses the geometry of the 3D objects, as opposed to postprocessing 2D images. We consider these methods from five
points of view.
(1) Line economy control. Strothotte et al. 10 presented a
system that allows the user to interactively control the level
of detail in selected areas of the rendered image, by increasing or decreasing the number of strokes. The system
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

enhances these details by varying line styles. Winkenbach

and Salesin 9 presented a related semi-automatic approach,
in which the user controls the number of strokes.
(2) Shape feature selection. Most research has been devoted
to silhouette detection 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 . Other types of lines
extracted from the model included ridges and valleys 17 ,
creases 18 , and lines related to the principal directions of curvature 13, 19, 20 .
(3) Weight control. A typical approach is to represent the
strokes as parametric curves p(t) 9, 10, 11, 21 . Offset vectors
are then added at particular values of parameter t, resulting in control points for a new parametric curve q(t). The
offset vectors depend on factors that influence real drawing
strokes (e.g., pressure applied to the drawing point and hand
gestures), and can be calculated on the fly or precomputed
and stored in lookup tables. Northrup and Markosian 16 , Kaplan et al. 22 , and Markosian et al. 23 proposed methods in
which line widths are scaled depending on the distance from
the viewer and the distance from other strokes in the object.
In addition, Kaplan et al. 22 proposed a weighting process
which scales the silhouette line widths according to the lighting of the object.
(4) Insertion of connectives. The focus has been on techniques for connecting feature edges (mainly silhouettes) to
form long and smooth strokes 11, 22, 24 , and on the insertion
of gaps between stroke segments (fig. 4(a)). Such gaps can
be defined by functions that capture the raising and lowering of the drawing point at particular values of parameter t
in the parametric representation of a stroke, p(t). As in the
case of weight control, these functions can be computed on
the fly 9, 10, 21 or queried from precomputed lookup tables 11 .
(5) Definition of enclosures. Two approaches have been explored: the explicit insertion of gaps along silhouette lines
(as explained above) and the use of a contrast enhancement
operator 25 that exposes the silhouette of a shaded model by
exaggerating the brightness of its contour edges, including
the silhouette.
In our work, we include some of these techniques to reproduce pure loose line drawings.
3. Our approach
Our algorithm takes as input a single 3D triangle mesh in the
.obj format. A half-edge data structure 26 is then constructed
to maintain edge adjacency information. We do not consider
illumination and surface reflectance information, and do not
use simulation models for ink and paper. The main steps of
the algorithm are performed in the object space, and are as
follows:
1. Feature lines are extracted and classified.
2. On this basis, several graphs are constructed as an input
for chaining, which is the connection of lines of the same
type into sequences.
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

3. These chains are extruded into 3D (perpendicular to the

objects surface), creating ribbons of width dependent on
a selected measure of surface curvature.
4. Spline curves are fitted to the edges of the ribbons, resulting in a smooth representation.
The final image is obtained by projecting the ribbons on the
projection plane. OpenGL performs the visibility computation (using a Z-buffer) and the final rendering of the ribbons.
In terms of the elements of pure line drawing reviewed in
the previous sections, the first step is the calculation of shape
features. Line weight is a function of the surface curvature.
Level of detail is controlled by feature thresholding and by
the length of curves fitted to the chained feature lines. The
connectives are not specified explicitly; nevertheless the user
can control the final appearance of the image to some extent
by changing the order of the spline curves.
The following subsections describe each step in more detail.

3.1. Feature edge classification

Our system distinguishes five types of feature edges: silhouette, boundary, crease, cap, and pit edges. We first examine
every edge in the half-edge data structure to identify edges
related to the outline of the object.
Silhouette edges are shared by a front-facing and backfacing polygons,
Boundary edges are incident to only one polygon.
Next, we extract three types of interior edges:
Creases depict folds within the object outlines. They correspond to edges shared by two front-facing polygons,
whose normal vectors make an angle within the limits (min, max) specified by the user; we assume that
0 min max 180.

Cap and pit edges are situated in convex and concave regions of surfaces, respectively (fig. 5) . In our system, cap
edges have both vertices situated in convex areas, and pit
edges have both vertices in concave areas.

Surface geometry can be classified into six categories defined by

the values of the principal curvatures: elliptical (convex when both
curvatures are positive or concave when both curvatures are negative), hyperbolic (convex in one direction and concave in the other),
flat (zero curvature in both directions), and cylindrical (convex when
curvature is positive in the non-flat direction or concave otherwise).
We have observed that artists tend to focus on depicting elliptical
regions 2, 3 .

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

assign directions to edges at random. Edges forming a chain

must have consistent directions, hence chaining of directed
edges yields a larger number of shorter chains, compared to
the undirected case. This difference eventually translates to
different visual quality of the rendered models.

Turk 27

Nomura and Hamada 28

We implement the feature graphs G using the adjacency

list representation 31 . Thus, for each feature vertex vi , we
store a list of pairs (v j , ek ), where v j is a feature vertex adjacent to vi , and ek is a feature edge between vi and v j . In
addition, for each vertex vi , we store its indegree (the number of edges that lead to vi ) and its outdegree (the number
of edges that emanate from vi ) 31 . For undirected graphs,
we assume that every vertex vi has its indegree equal to the
outdegree. While chaining edges of undirected graphs, the
starting points for chains are chosen arbitrarily. In the case
of directed graphs, we attempt to start chains at sources (vertices with no incoming edges, indegree = 0) and finish at
sinks (vertices with no outgoing edges, outdegree = 0). The
following two algorithms, valid for both directed and undirected graphs, describe the chain building process:

Figure 5: Results of the two methods for extracting cap and pit
edges, implemented in our system. Top row: the extraction of caps
(blue) and pits (red) typically results in the formation of feature
regions. They consist of triangles with all three edges being feature
edges. Bottom row: the networks of cap and pit edges.

Curvature Estimation
Curvature estimation of a triangulated mesh is a non-trivial
problem 29 . Furthermore, it is not obvious what type of curvature is most appropriate for extracting regions relevant to
our application. We experimented with two methods: the first
method, proposed by Turk 27 , finds approximate maximum
curvature; the second method, by Nomura and Hamada 28 ,
selects concave and convex regions using a method related
to the calculation of mean curvature. Examples of regions
selected using both methods are shown in fig. 5. Both methods led to useful practical results.
3.2. Building chains of feature edges
The edge classification process results in many disconnected
feature edges. We now link them together to create chains
of line segments with the same features. To this end, we
build five graphs G, one for each type of feature edges. These
graphs can be undirected or directed; in the latter case, we
A problem with extracting silhouette curves from polygon
meshes is that the resulting curves may be jagged, because
the meshes are just approximations of the underlying continuous surfaces. Although methods to address this problem exist
(e.g. 13, 16, 18, 30 ), we have not implemented them, because we observed that the silhouette artifacts do not compromise the quality of
our results.

B UILD -A LL -C HAINS(G)
1 set o f chains EMPTY
2 while true
3
do sources FindSources(G)
4
if sources = EMPTY
5
then return set o f chains
6
while sources 6= EMPTY
7
do vs PickRandomSource(sources)
8
C BuildSingleChain(vs , G)
9
insert C in set o f chains
10
for all vertices vi sources
11
do if vi .outdegree = 0
12
then remove vi f rom sources
B UILD -S INGLE -C HAIN(vs , G)
1 chain EMPTY ; vi vs ; insert vi in chain
2 while true
3
do (v j , ek ) PickRandomPath(vi , G)
4
if v j = EMPTY
5
then return chain
6
insert v j in chain
7
update indegree and outdegree o f vi and v j
8
f lag edge ek as visited
9
vi v j
In line 3 of the second algorithm, PickRandomPath() returns
(v j , ek ) (EMPTY, EMPTY ) if vi .outdegree = 0, which
means that a complete chain has been built (i.e. we have
reached a sink vertex); otherwise it returns any pair (v j , ek )
where ek has not yet been visited. In line 7, for directed
graph, we subtract one unit from the outdegree of vi and one
unit from the indegree of v j . For undirected graphs, we subtract one unit from both the indegree and the outdegree of vi
and v j .
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

Figures 6 and 7 show examples of chain extraction using

directed and undirected graphs, respectively. In both figures,
graphs nodes are labeled Vertex ID (indegree, outdegree).
For a sample directed graph (fig. 6), the set of sources is initially equal to {1, 2}, and the set of sinks to {6, 8, 9}. Given
that source and path selection are both random processes
(line 7 in BuildAllChains() and line 3 in BuildSingleChain(),
respectively), the chaining process may begin with vertex 1,
and the first chain may be defined by the vertex sequence {1,
4, 5, 10, 6}. Figure 6 shows the updated values for the indegree and outdegree of vertices, and the resulting curve to the
right of the graph. Before the next chain is extracted, nodes
{1,10} will be removed from the graph (lines 10-12 in BuildAllChains()), resulting in sources = {2} and sinks = {6, 8,
9}. At the end, three other chains will be extracted: {2, 4, 3,
9}, {5, 7, 8}, and {5,6}. In the case of an undirected graph
(fig. 7), let us assume that the chain = {1, 4, 5, 10, 6, 5, 7, 8}
has been extracted first. The updated indegree and outdegree
values and the resulting curve are shown in the figure. Before the next chain is extracted, nodes {1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10} will
be removed, resulting in the set of sources equal to {2, 3, 4,
9}. Further chains can be extracted starting with any vertex,
and may yield the following chain combinations: {2,4,3,9};
({2,4}, {4,2}, {4,3,9}); or ( {3,9}, {3,4,2} ).

Figure 6: Example showing one chain extracted from a directed

decisions concerning the emphasis, and on the overall design

balance required for the drawing. For the purpose of suggesting 3D shapes, we consider the traditional approach in which
illustrators vary ink placement based on the perceived curvature of the subject. In general, more ink is deposited along
line sections passing over areas with high curvature 2, 3, 5 . We
model this thickness variation by defining 3D polygonal ribbons supported by the mesh (fig. 8). To this end, we extrude
(in 3D) each vertex vi of each chain C in the direction of
vi s normal, thus producing an offset polyline C. Each vertex
vi of C is thus defined by vi = vi + |wi | Ni , where Ni is the
normal at vertex vi , and wi is a measure of curvature at vi
(subsec. 3.1). When the curvature is small or equal to zero,
our system forces wi to be equal to a user-specified minimum
value , producing lines of a non-zero thickness.
3.4. Curve fitting
Strassman 32 and Pham 33 have explored the technique of
smoothing line strokes by fitting curves to them. We follow the same approach by fitting B-splines to the pair of
polylines (C, C) (i.e., the original chain and its extrusion,
fig. 8(c)), which results in a new pair of curves (S, S)
(fig. 8(d)). The user specifies the resolution of the B-spline
and the order m of the curve. This controls in the smoothness
of the line trajectory, which visually corresponds to the fluidity of ink placement along the line. The curves S and S are
generated using n control points, equal to the number of feature vertices vi in the chain C. Two main effects are achieved
by simply increasing the order m of a curve segment: (1) the
introduction of gaps (enclosure) at the ends where there is
insufficient basis to support construction of a higher order
curve (figs. 4, 9) and (2) the variation of the extent to which
a curve is required to interpolate its control points, which
affects the linear connective relations (fig. 4).

graph. Boxes surround the vertices that are part of the chain.

3.5. Rendering

Figure 7: Example showing one (self-intersecting) chain extracted

from an undirected graph.

In our system, all rendering calls use OpenGL. Visibility

computations use the Z-buffer, with the triangles rendered
in the background color (white), and the stroke ribbons rendered (in black) as triangle strips formed by the pairs of
curves (S, S). We avoid Z-buffer artifacts (inappropriately
clipped or hidden strokes) by following the approach of
Rossl et al. 20 . It consists of slightly translating the strokes
along the vertex normal (the ribbon extrusion direction).
This significantly reduces the stroke artifacts without compromising the quality of the results. The user can control the
offset value, but little user intervention was needed while
generating images presented in this paper.
4. Results and discussion

3.3. Line weight computation

The choice of how thick the lines should be depends on the
level of detail and complexity of shapes, on the illustrators
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

All the results were generated on an 1GHz Pentium III with

a GeForce2 card. We selected 3D models representing a variety of subjects. For models with less then 5k triangles, the

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

(a)

(b)

(c)

(c)

Figure 8: Line weighting (subsec. 3.3) and smoothing (subsec. 3.4) processes: (a) chains C of feature edges (in red) used in subsequent extrude
operations. The pairs ( C, C ) (represented in 2D in (b)) define 3D ribbons across the mesh (c). (d) Curve fitting smoothes the 3D ribbons,
creating the visual effects of ink fluidity and linear connectives/enclosure.

Figure 9: Enclosure effect introduced by varying the order of the

curve m across the silhouette chains (from left to right m = 2, 3, 4).

Figure 10 illustrates the steps for rendering pure line

drawings using our system. Starting with a 3D mesh, we add
silhouettes and progressively render creases, caps and pits.
Notice the enclosure at the silhouette suggesting the overall form of the model. Also notice how the strokes suggest
hair, face and coat features. The increase in the number of
lines is due to the user adjusting threshold values related to
feature selection. The user also controls additional scaling
of the line weight (subsec. 3.3) and adjusts the order of the
curves fitted to the chain of line segments (subsec. 3.4). Figures 1 (left) and 12 show further results obtained using the
same 3D model.

rendering time was below one second (see Table 1 for details). The results show that our approach produces images
similar to line drawings executed by hand, as found in artistic
and scientific illustrations. To evaluate the system we chose
representative pure line drawings (such as the ones from Figure 2) and used our system to duplicate the effect. Our evaluation is thus conducted by observing how close to the original drawings the computer-generated ones are.

Model

#edges

s+b

s+b+c

all 27

all 28

Figure 10: Example showing typical results while interacting with

Mans head
Venus
Galleon
Bunny
Beethoven
Cow
Fireweed
Sunflower
Hyacinth
Castle
Car

2,043
2,127
7,047
7,473
7,663
8,706
13,421
14,784
17,141
19,675
24,969

1
< 1
1
3
3
2
13
22
20
20
19

1
< 1
3
4
5
4
19
31
31
32
42

1
< 1
6
5
9
9
31
39
56
59
95

1
< 1
6
4
9
11
30
39
47
60
95

our system. User selects features for display, adjusts their thresholds and controls the stroke attributes of weight and curve order. In
this particular example, we start with the Beethoven mesh, add silhouettes, and gradually increase the number of crease, cap and pit
strokes placed in the model.

Table 1: Average times (in seconds) for rendering silhouettes +

boundaries (s + b), silhouettes + boundaries + creases (s + b + c),
and all feature edges. In the latter case, we distinguish between the
calculation of caps and pits using the method proposed by Turk 27
and the method proposed by Nomura and Hamada (all 28 ).

Two important effects appear in the final rendering due

to the graph organization of chained feature edges (subsec. 3.2): stroke length and path variations. They are described next.
Stroke length variations. The use of directed graphs results in a larger number of chains with shorter line segments,
compared to the use of undirected graphs (fig. 11). Both approaches produce good results and the final choice is up to
the user. Directed graphs yield many polylines (or chains)
that are later shortened or eliminated due to the curve fitting
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

(a) Gd

Gd
Gd
Gu
Gu

:
:
:
:

nc
lc
nc
lc

f1
142
163
27
273

(b) Gu

f2
178
141
167
142

f 3m1
350
438
280
451

f 4m1
250
264
186
275

f 3m2
340
386
244
395

Figure 12: Examples of rendering variations due to different ranf 4m2

287
314
206
322

Figure 11: Example showing the effects of stroke length variations

resulting from the chaining of feature edges. In the table, nc is the
total number of chains and lc is the mean length of chains (number
of vertices), that results from chaining silhouettes, creases, caps and
pits ( f 1, f 2, f 3, f 4 respectively), using directed (Gd ) and undirected
(Gu ) graphs (subsec. 3.2). For caps and pits, m1 and m2 refer to the
methods of Turk 27 and Nomura and Hamada 28 , respectively.

and curve order control (fig. 11, left). This is the reason why
directed graphs are more appropriate to reproduce a loose
drawing style, with larger distributions of gaps and connectives relations along the lines. Undirected graphs result in a
tighter drawing where lines seem to be more specifically
placed with fewer gaps along them, especially at the silhouettes (fig. 11, right).
Stroke path variations. We use a randomized approach for
the chains source and path selection. This results in a large
variation of path configurations, but does not have a significant impact on the overall quality of the final renderings.
For example, consider the images shown in Figure 12, which
were obtained using the same dihedral threshold angle for
extracting creases. Although the extracted paths are different (especially in the hair), all three images make a similar
overall impression.
Figure 13 shows how our systems can be used for botanical illustration. Notice how a few strokes with proper weight
suggest complex arrangements of plant elements, including different petal shapes and levels of branching. This figure also shows how different perceptions of shape can be
achieved by rendering feature edges individually and in
combination.
The final set of images (fig. 14) illustrates the operation of
our system for four different models. In the galleon, observe
how strokes suggest the overall shape of the hull. Crease and
cap strokes suggest folds on the sail. In the cow, enclosures
suggest key features of the head, the concave junction of
c The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers 2003.

dom choices in the chaining of feature edges.

front leg with body, the roundness of the belly, and concave
regions at the back. In the castle, notice the cluster of lines
suggesting the arches, the single lines for the walls, and a
few lines suggesting the pointed roof of the tower. Finally,
in the car, notice the suggestion of the shape of the wheels,
the hood, and the foot stand by the door.
5. Conclusions and future work
This paper presents a 3D NPR method that automatically
reproduces traditional pure line drawings. The simple combination of chaining, weighting, and smoothing applied to
outline and interior feature edges of an input mesh reproduces the effects of ink fluidity, line weighting, connectives
and enclosure, and leads to results adding three-dimensional
shape suggestion using selected feature lines. This conforms
to the main characteristics of loose line drawing style using
traditional linear phrasing techniques. The illustrative power
of the resulting images depends on the interplay between the
depicted lines and the imagination of the observer.
Future improvements include extending our system with
other algorithms for shape feature analysis (including alternative curvature estimation methods). It would also be
useful to have automatic selection of threshold values assigned in different regions of the model to allow, for instance, better control of the level of detail (in terms of line
quantities and styles) in selected regions of the model. Another interesting path to explore is the reproduction of additional connectives/enclosure effects following the patterns
found in traditional drawings used in artistic and scientific
illustrations. The criteria we use to judge the quality of the
non-photorealistic rendering is solely based on observations
of how close to the original drawings are to the computergenerated ones. It is important to conduct more formal evaluations and user studies to provide quality pure line drawing
tools for illustrators in art and science.

Sousa and Prusinkiewicz / Suggestive Line Drawing

Figure 13: Results for botanical illustrations: fireweed model shown in full view (left) and four drawing steps (top) showing (from left to
right) silhouettes, boundaries, silhouettes + boundaries, and silhouettes + creases + caps. Bottom: sunflower and hyacinth.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Martin Fuhrer for his help generating plant models, and Brian Wyvill, Patricia Rebolo Medici,
Desmond Rochfort, Alan Dunning, and Peter MacMurchy
for the useful discussions and advice. We also thank the
anonymous reviewers for their careful and valuable comments and suggestions. This research was supported in part
by Discovery Grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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