CageModeler: An Open-Source Project for Cage-Based Deformation

The interactive modeling of 3-D shapes is an important application of computer graphics. A versatile and interactive method for anisotropic shape deformation is cage-based deformation. We have released the CageModeler open-source project to provide the computer graphics community with a large collection of the most relevant methods for cage-based deformation. To facilitate practical use and future research, our project provides an extensible tool for interactive modeling. Our project is designed for collaborative open-source development, in order to enable researchers to implement their own methods building upon our project. In addition, our project includes evaluation functionality to investigate performance metrics, such as run time or local deformation influence. In this article, we present and review the design of our software in the light of open-source development. Important key aspects of our software design are automated dependence management, usage of available open-source libraries, and modular code design. To reflect on our design choices, we describe our lessons learned during the development process.