# Automated pebble mosaic stylization of images

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for synthesizing pebble mosaics from images by adapting clustering and shape smoothing techniques to produce realistic, textured pebble mosaics with detailed geometry.

## Contribution

It presents a new approach combining clustering, shape smoothing, and geometry modeling to generate realistic pebble mosaics from images, addressing both tiling and shape creation.

## Key findings

- Produces detailed pebble mosaic representations of input images
- Integrates shape smoothing with tiling for realistic pebble appearance
- Generates full geometry suitable for rendering and texturing

## Abstract

Digital mosaics have usually used regular tiles, simulating the historical "tessellated" mosaics. In this paper, we present a method for synthesizing pebble mosaics, a historical mosaic style in which the tiles are rounded pebbles. We address both the tiling problem, where pebbles are distributed over the image plane so as to approximate the input image content, and the problem of geometry, creating a smooth rounded shape for each pebble. We adapt SLIC, simple linear iterative clustering, to obtain elongated tiles conforming to image content, and smooth the resulting irregular shapes into shapes resembling pebble cross-sections. Then, we create an interior and exterior contour for each pebble and solve a Laplace equation over the region between them to obtain height-field geometry. The resulting pebble set approximates the input image while presenting full geometry that can be rendered and textured for a highly detailed representation of a pebble mosaic.