xhtml header: css: style.css # Introduction TODO # Index * **100_FileIO**: Example of reading/writing mesh files * **101_Serialization**: Example of using the XML serialization framework * **102_DrawMesh**: Example of plotting a mesh * [202 Gaussian Curvature](#gaus) # Compilation Instructions All examples depends on glfw, glew and anttweakbar. A copy of the sourcecode of each library is provided together with libigl and they can be precompiled using: sh compile_macosx.sh (MACOSX) sh compile_linux.sh (LINUX) compile_windows.bat (Visual Studio 2012) Every example can be compiled by using the cmake file provided in its folder. On Linux and MacOSX, you can use the provided bash script: sh ../compile_example.sh # Chapter 2: Discrete Geometric Quantities and Operators This chapter illustrates a few discrete quantities that libigl can compute on a mesh. This also provides an introduction to basic drawing and coloring routines in our example viewer. Finally, we construct popular discrete differential geometry operators. ## Gaussian Curvature Gaussian curvature on a continuous surface is defined as the product of the principal curvatures: $k_G = k_1 k_2.$ As an _intrinsic_ measure, it depends on the metric and not the surface's embedding. Intuitively, Gaussian curvature tells how locally spherical or _elliptic_ the surface is ( $k_G>0$ ), how locally saddle-shaped or _hyperbolic_ the surface is ( $k_G<0$ ), or how locally cylindrical or _parabolic_ ( $k_G=0$ ) the surface is. In the discrete setting, one definition for a ``discrete Gaussian curvature'' on a triangle mesh is via a vertex's _angular deficit_: $k_G(v_i) = 2π - \sum\limits_{j\in N(i)}θ_{ij},$ where $N(i)$ are the triangles incident on vertex $i$ and $θ_{ij}$ is the angle at vertex $i$ in triangle $j$. Just like the continuous analog, our discrete Gaussian curvature reveals elliptic, hyperbolic and parabolic vertices on the domain. ![The `GaussianCurvature` example computes discrete Gaussian curvature and visualizes it in pseudocolor.](images/bumpy-gaussian-curvature.jpg)