Cylindrical and Toroidal Parameterizations Without Vertex Seams

Abstract A simple rendering method to avoid vertex seams in cylindrical and toroidal UV mappings used for texture mapping is presented. (A vertex seam is a vertex duplication of a polygonal mesh with different texture coordinates assigned to the two geometrically coinciding copies.) As a result, the method leads to simpler, leaner, replication-free data structures. Is also allows for a higher degree of proceduralism in generation of texture coordinates. The method is general, trivial to implement (exhaustive pseudocode is provided), very low in cost on resources (with a virtually null impact on performance), and it leverages only basic mechanisms widely available in most GPU implementations. An open-source implementation is available at the address provided at the end of this article.