Micropolygon Modeling with Metageometry

(ongoing research)

Polygon meshes are popular for modeling 3D objects, but mastering polygonal modeling is a challenging task. This is mainly because polygonal modeling involves working at a low level of abstraction, manipulating vertices, edges, and faces of a potentially high-resolution mesh, while relying on additional tools such as subdivision, retopology, and rigging to bridge the gap between intended shape and editable representation. We explore an alternative in which polygon meshes are treated as a geometric substrate rather than the primary authoring interface.

We present Micropolygon modeling, a user-authored interactive segmentation of a 3D surface into meta-primitives that serve as an intuitive high-level interface for organic and hard-surface modeling. The underlying micropolygon mesh is maintained and re-meshed automatically, so that edits are expressed over the meta-structure rather than over individual polygons. A set of familiar polygonal modeling operations applied to this structure, along with brushing tools that can alter the high-resolution geometry without exposing the high-resolution topology.

Micropolygon Modeling SIGGRAPH 2026 Poster Paper