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Leapfrog's implicit drawing tool: A new way of drawing geological objects of

any shape rapidly in 3D

Article · January 2004

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MINING GEOLOGY 2004
Innovations in Coal and Metalliferous Mining Geology

EXTENDED ABSTRACTS

Australian Institute of Geoscientists

Bulletin No. 41
2004
MINING GEOLOGY 2004
Innovation in coal and metalliferous mining geology

The Mining Geology 2004 organising

committee wishes to gratefully acknowledge
sponsorship of the proceedings by:

INTEGRATED TECHNICAL SERVICES FOR THE MINING INDUSTRY WORLDWIDE

• Resource Estimation • Geological Modelling • Mine Planning & Engineering • Mining Geology & Grade Control • Project Valuations
• Tailings Management • Rock Mechanics & Geotechnical Engineering • Hydrogeology • Environmental Management

Perth: +61 8 9213 7600 • Brisbane +61 7 3721 5400 • www.golder.com.au/mining

AIG BULLETIN 41 BRISBANE

Publisher: Australian Institute of Geoscientists 21 October 2004
Address: P O Box 8463, Perth Business Centre WA 6849
 © Australian Institute of Geoscientists
Perth Business Centre
WA 6849

ISSN 0812-6089
ISBN 0-9750047-2-7

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Available from: AIG

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Bibliographic reference
Berry M.V. and Quigley M.L. 2004, Mining Geology 2004 Workshop, Bulletin 41, pp
92.

DISCLAIMER

The Organising Committee sought to obtain a broad coverage of this topic. Every
effort was made to minimise amendments in content of the resultant papers. The
opinions and statements within the individual papers comprising this Bulletin
reflect solely the viewpoint of their authors, and are not necessarily shared by the
Organising Committee or the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

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Geoscientists.
 Leapfrog’s implicit drawing tool: a new way of drawing
geological objects of any shape rapidly in 3D
E. Jun Cowan1, Richard G. Lane2 and Hughan J. Ross2

INTRODUCTION
Leapfrog ™ software was released to the resource market in December 2003, and has been
gaining in popularity with explorers and mine operators of metalliferous deposits, principally in
Western Australia. Leapfrog’s main strength is its ability to 3D contour grade data straight
from desurveyed drillhole data without the need for creating block models. This 3D capability
has allowed exploration geologists who have traditionally used 2D GIS-based products to
review regional distribution of grades to view their grade trends in 3D space. Leapfrog is also
popular with property evaluators of mining companies who require an objective view when
inspecting deposits that are on the market.
We are about to release an upgrade of the software (version 1.5), which will contain some
powerful enhancements including lithological boundary modelling. The other major highlight
of the upgrade is Leapfrog’s free-form 3D drawing tool. The ability of this drawing tool is
unlike any other software tool that is available in the resource market, as we rely on a new
modelling paradigm to allow geologists to rapidly create 3D objects of any shape (Figure 1).
Existing software methods to quickly construct surfaces can work only on line-of-sight
sampled data (eg. lithological contact points in drillhole data). Line-of-sight data can simply be
modeled with 2D or F(x,y) interpolation techniques. Two-dimensional interpolation, however,
does not allow non line-of-sight data such as overturned folds or more complex 3D shapes
such as intrusions to be modelled. Leapfrog’s tools works on true three dimensional data
(F(x,y,z)) but the process is as easy as 2D interpolation and this is the main distinguishing
feature of Leapfrog’s drawing tool.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IMPLICIT MODELLING

The modelling paradigm that the Leapfrog drawing tool is based on is referred to in the
graphics literature as implicit modelling (Bloomenthal 1997). The name is derived from the
fact that the modelled surfaces, such as lithological contacts, sketched fault surfaces or
isograde surfaces, represent iso-potentials of continuous volumetric functions. The surface
that is modelled therefore is not explicitly defined by way of digitizing every triangulation
vertices, but the existence of the surface is implied in the volumetric function which is usually
only defined by only a small amount of control points. The iso-potentials are simply evaluated
and saved as triangulations from this volume function.
Implicit modelling technique can be traced back to the computer graphics literature in the
1980s where iso-distance potentials generated from primitive geometric objects, such as
spaces curves and spheres, were blended together to form complex objects. Since these
objects can be expressed as algebraic equations (Blinn 1982), the shapes could be animated
readily and were used in special effects for motion pictures. An example of such an
animation can be seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Paramount Pictures,
1991) where a character in the film is shot by a laser beam and blood flows out from the body
into zero gravity. Implicit surfaces that morphed into various shapes realistically simulated
blood globules floating in space.
Useful as it may have been in the movie industry, the implicit modelling technique could not
be developed as a general 3D modelling tool because the technique relied on generating the
shapes from fixed distances from the primitives. That is, the control points had to be
positioned away from the actual surface to be constructed; therefore this technique was

1
Zaparo Limited (Leapfrog Software), Level 3, IBM Building, 1060 Hay Street, West Perth, WA 6005, Australia
2
Zaparo Limited (Leapfrog Software), Ground Floor, St Elmo Courts, 47 Hereford Street, Christchurch, New Zealand

Mining Geology 2004 23

Brisbane, Australia October 2004
Leapfrog’s implicit drawing tool: a new way of drawing Cowan, Lane and Ross
geological objects of any shape rapidly in 3D

unsuitable for most geological modelling applications, and as well unsuitable as a general
surface drawing tool.
The implicit modelling method only recently become a practical methodology for modelling
natural data when the technique was combined with rapid 3D interpolation (Carr et al. 2001).
The method outlined by Carr et al. (2001) allows the control points to be located on the
surface to be modelled, and together with the fact that there is no limit placed on the number
of control points (other than hardware limitation) makes this a very practical technique for
geological modelling.

THE ADVANTAGES OF LEAPFROG’S IMPLICIT FREE-FORM DRAWING TOOL

Unlike traditional software tools available in the resource industry, the input data to Leapfrog,
such as assay values, lithological codes and drawn polylines, are converted to a volume
function (f(x,y,z)) within Leapfrog software by way of spatial interpolation of the point
attributes (cf. Cowan et al. 2003). We use a volumetric spline interpolation to fit the data (or
more specifically referred to as bi-harmonic radial basis function), but effectively any
interpolation function can be used to fit the data into a volumetric function, including Kriging.
The free-form drawing tool that utilises the volumetric spline function has attributes that are
ideally suited for geological modelling, and these are:
1. Results in the smoothest surface that goes through the control points. This
characteristic is ideal for geological modelling, as the boundaries between drillholes
are invariably manually smoothed by the geologists who model with traditional 3D
modelling software.
2. The drawing can be done using the drawn control points and polyline contours, but
can incorporate any contact points that are extracted from the drillhole database.
3. Incorporating contact points of several thousand points into a drawn object surface
takes only tens of seconds to process.
4. The volumetric spline can be either fitted with, or without, a noise factor that may
better represent the surface roughness of a geological contact (equivalent to a nugget
value). That is, the control points can be digitally snapped to, or an average smooth
surface can be fitted through rough contact data. A boundary fitted with a nugget
value would ideally be used if there is some uncertainty in its position.
5. Three-dimensional shapes of any geometry can be drawn simply with a standard
three-button mouse without the need for non-standard input tools, such as a haptic
device.
6. It can rapidly draw any shape, including objects that are branched, but there is no
need to use tie-lines, as required in traditional software to create 3D objects.
7. Although the input control points are drawn in sections as contours or points, the
sections do not necessarily have to be parallel to each other and can be drawn in
arbitrary sections (Figure 1).
8. There is no need to draw closed contours when trying to construct a closed object,
such as an intrusion, as required by traditional software. The polylines can be
defined where the geologist is confident of the boundary position (eg. close to
drillholes) and the rest is interpolated smoothly by the volumetric spline interpolator.
9. Object editing is done by modifying the control contours and points and
reinterpolating, rather than editing the object mesh (Figure 1).
10. The drawn 3D objects are saved as continuous functions, therefore, the objects can
be generated at any desired resolution.
11. Functional representation of geological objects such as strata or faults requires no
editing if these features terminate against each other. Boolean operations are
conducted with the functions, rather than the computed mesh surfaces.

Mining Geology 2004 24

Brisbane, Australia October 2004
 Leapfrog’s implicit drawing tool: a new way of drawing Cowan, Lane and Ross
geological objects of any shape rapidly in 3D

Figure 1. a) Mixture of closed and open polylines are drawn in four non-parallel sections. Note the
absence of tie-lines; b) Implicit surface smoothly fitted through the control lines; c) Two of the original
control lines are quickly edited, and d) shows the resulting implicit surface after polyline editing. The
surface generation takes seconds, and mesh resolution can be changed by the user.

CONCLUSIONS
Leapfrog’s free-form drawing tool makes the creation of 3D geological objects a simple
process and this is only possible because Leapfrog works with a new modelling paradigm.
What is impossible with 2D interpolation becomes simple in 3D interpolation. Leapfrog does
not require the operator to be experienced in mining 3D modelling software, and indeed,
many users of Leapfrog cite the ease of use as being one of the main attractions of Leapfrog.
A mere three hours is the average to become proficient at creating complex 3D objects that
take many weeks to create in traditional software that requires extensive manual digitization.
For more information on Leapfrog visit URL www.leapfrog3d.com.

REFERENCES
Blinn, J., 1982, A Generalization of Algebraic Surface Drawing, ACM Trans. Graphics, 1(3),
135-256.
Bloomenthal, J., Editor., 1997, Introduction to Implicit Surfaces. Morgan Kaufmann
Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, California
Carr, J C, Beatson, R K, Cherrie, J B, Mitchell, T J, Fright, W R, McCallum, B C and Evans, T
R, 2001. Reconstruction and representation of 3D objects with radial basis functions,
SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series (SIGGRAPH 2001),
67-76.
Cowan E.J., Beatson, R.K., Ross, H.J., Fright, W.R., McLennan, T.J., Evans, T.R., Carr, J.C.,
Lane, R.G., Bright, D.V., Gillman, A.J., Oshurst, P.A., and Titley, M. 2003, Practical Implicit
Geological Modelling, 5th International Mining Geology Conference Proceedings, AusIMM
Publication Series 8/2003, 89-99.

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