ABSTRACT
Freeform curves and surfaces are smooth shapes often describing man-made objects. The hood of a car, the hull of a ship, and the fuselage of an airplane are all examples of freeform shapes. Freeform surfaces differ from the classical surfaces we encountered in earlier chapters such as spheres, cylinders, cones, and tori. Classical surfaces are typically easy to describe with a few simple parameters. A sphere can be represented by a center point and a scalar radius; a cone by a vertex point, a vertex angle, and an axis vector. The hood of a car or the hull of a ship is not so easy to describe with a few simple parameters. The goal of the next few chapters is to develop mathematical techniques for describing freeform curves and surfaces.
