Krishnamurthy and Levoy, SIGGRAPH 1996

Algorithm to convert dense irregular polygon meshes or arbitrary topology into tensor product B-spline surface patches with accompanying displacement maps
- Paint patch boundaries over a rendering of the mesh
- Resample each bounded section of the mesh on a grid
- Fit a tensor product B-spline surface to the grid, and output displacement maps

Algorithm to convert dense irregular polygon meshes or arbitrary topology into tensor product B-spline surface patches with accompanying displacement maps