Given an arbitrary non-convex polygon (2d) with $n$ vertices, is there any procedure by which to map it to a single convex polygon, and then back again? Maybe operating somehow on the angles between edges to map the image to the right (below) to the image to the left? If so, is there any generalization to polytopes (>2d)? Any guidance is appreciated.
2026-03-30 23:11:38.1774912298
Is there any bijective mapping between a non-convex polygon and a convex polygon?
540 Views Asked by Bumbble Comm https://math.techqa.club/user/bumbble-comm/detail At
1
There are 1 best solutions below
Related Questions in GEOMETRY
- Point in, on or out of a circle
- Find all the triangles $ABC$ for which the perpendicular line to AB halves a line segment
- How to see line bundle on $\mathbb P^1$ intuitively?
- An underdetermined system derived for rotated coordinate system
- Asymptotes of hyperbola
- Finding the range of product of two distances.
- Constrain coordinates of a point into a circle
- Position of point with respect to hyperbola
- Length of Shadow from a lamp?
- Show that the asymptotes of an hyperbola are its tangents at infinity points
Related Questions in GRAPH-THEORY
- characterisation of $2$-connected graphs with no even cycles
- Explanation for the static degree sort algorithm of Deo et al.
- A certain partition of 28
- decomposing a graph in connected components
- Is it true that if a graph is bipartite iff it is class 1 (edge-coloring)?
- Fake induction, can't find flaw, every graph with zero edges is connected
- Triangle-free graph where every pair of nonadjacent vertices has exactly two common neighbors
- Inequality on degrees implies perfect matching
- Proving that no two teams in a tournament win same number of games
- Proving that we can divide a graph to two graphs which induced subgraph is connected on vertices of each one
Related Questions in EUCLIDEAN-GEOMETRY
- Visualization of Projective Space
- Triangle inequality for metric space where the metric is angles between vectors
- Circle inside kite inside larger circle
- If in a triangle ABC, ∠B = 2∠C and the bisector of ∠B meets CA in D, then the ratio BD : DC would be equal to?
- Euclidean Fifth Postulate
- JMO geometry Problem.
- Measure of the angle
- Difference between parallel and Equal lines
- Complex numbers - prove |BD| + |CD| = |AD|
- Find the ratio of segments using Ceva's theorem
Related Questions in POLYGONS
- Can the relocation of one control point of a NURBS curve be compensated by an adjustment of some weights?
- Need a hint regarding this question...
- How do I detect if a circle overlaps with a polygon or not?
- A peculiar Diophantine equation
- Looking for Regular Polygons with a Side to Diagonal ratio Equaling a Metallic Mean
- Calculating the value of $\pi$
- Bounding Numbers for $N>2$
- Generalizing Odom's construction of the golden ratio
- Integrating difficult function over a polygon
- Existence and uniqueness of a Riemann-Hilbert problem involving a polygon
Trending Questions
- Induction on the number of equations
- How to convince a math teacher of this simple and obvious fact?
- Find $E[XY|Y+Z=1 ]$
- Refuting the Anti-Cantor Cranks
- What are imaginary numbers?
- Determine the adjoint of $\tilde Q(x)$ for $\tilde Q(x)u:=(Qu)(x)$ where $Q:U→L^2(Ω,ℝ^d$ is a Hilbert-Schmidt operator and $U$ is a Hilbert space
- Why does this innovative method of subtraction from a third grader always work?
- How do we know that the number $1$ is not equal to the number $-1$?
- What are the Implications of having VΩ as a model for a theory?
- Defining a Galois Field based on primitive element versus polynomial?
- Can't find the relationship between two columns of numbers. Please Help
- Is computer science a branch of mathematics?
- Is there a bijection of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not?
- Identification of a quadrilateral as a trapezoid, rectangle, or square
- Generator of inertia group in function field extension
Popular # Hahtags
second-order-logic
numerical-methods
puzzle
logic
probability
number-theory
winding-number
real-analysis
integration
calculus
complex-analysis
sequences-and-series
proof-writing
set-theory
functions
homotopy-theory
elementary-number-theory
ordinary-differential-equations
circles
derivatives
game-theory
definite-integrals
elementary-set-theory
limits
multivariable-calculus
geometry
algebraic-number-theory
proof-verification
partial-derivative
algebra-precalculus
Popular Questions
- What is the integral of 1/x?
- How many squares actually ARE in this picture? Is this a trick question with no right answer?
- Is a matrix multiplied with its transpose something special?
- What is the difference between independent and mutually exclusive events?
- Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain
- taylor series of $\ln(1+x)$?
- How to tell if a set of vectors spans a space?
- Calculus question taking derivative to find horizontal tangent line
- How to determine if a function is one-to-one?
- Determine if vectors are linearly independent
- What does it mean to have a determinant equal to zero?
- Is this Batman equation for real?
- How to find perpendicular vector to another vector?
- How to find mean and median from histogram
- How many sides does a circle have?

If both polygons have a similar triangulation, i.e. can be decomposed to the same number of nondegenerate triangles with the same connectivity graph, then yes.
(And such mapping is trivial, as it is a set of mappings between corresponding triangles.)
Whether this is a necessary (and not just sufficient) condition, I do not know.
This extends trivially to higher dimensions. In 2D, each cell in the grid is a 2-simplex, i.e. triangle; in 3D, a 3-simplex, i.e. a tetrahedron; in 4D, a 4-simplex, i.e. a 5-cell, and so on.
In the example case, the two have a similar triangulation using three triangles, giving a trivial bijective mapping between the two:
When morphing between images, the shapes are covered by a (triangular) grid where grid vertices are at similar details, and the mapping itself is usually bicubic (using coordinates of more than one grid cell, so that grid cells are less visible in the morphed output).
Edited to describe the affine (linear) map between triangles:
An affine map between two triangles is trivial, by using barycentric coordinates $(u, v, w)$: If $\vec{p}_u$, $\vec{p}_v$, and $\vec{p}_w$ are the vertices of the triangle, then barycentric coordinates $(u, v, w)$ correspond to point $u \vec{p}_u + v \vec{p}_v + w \vec{p}_w$.
By definition, $u + v + w = 1$. Point $(u, v, w)$ is within the triangle if and only if $0 \le u \le 1$, $0 \le v \le 1$, and $0 \le w \le 1$.
Because $u + v + w = 1$ by definition, one of them (usually $w$, via $w = 1 - u - v$) is left out for simplicity.
If we have a triangle with vertex $\vec{p}_0 = (x_0 , y_0)$, and the other two vertices at $\vec{p}_u = (x_0 + x_u , y_0 + y_u)$ and $\vec{p}_v = (x_0 + x_v , y_0 + y_v)$, then $$\left\lbrace\begin{aligned} x(u, v) &= x_0 + u x_u + v x_v \\ y(u, v) &= y_0 + u y_u + v y_v \\ \end{aligned}\right. \quad \iff \quad \left\lbrace\begin{aligned} u(x, y) &= \displaystyle \frac{(x - x_0)v_y - (y - y_0)v_x}{u_x v_y - u_y v_x} \\ v(x, y) &= \displaystyle \frac{u_x (y - y_0) - u_y (x - x_0)}{u_x v_y - u_y v_x} \\ \end{aligned}\right.$$ In a computer program, you'll want to use form $$\left\lbrace\begin{aligned} u_i &= (x - X_i) A_i + (y - Y_i) B_i \\ v_i &= (x - X_i) C_i + (y - Y_i) D_i \\ \end{aligned}\right.$$ for each source triangle $i$, the correct one being the one for which $0 \le u_i \le 1$, $0 \le v_i \le 1$, $0 \le u_i + v_i \le 1$. The six constants ($X_i$, $Y_i$, $A_i$, $B_i$, $C_i$, $D_i$) are calculated from the three vertices of triangle $i$, $(x_0, y_0)$, $(x_1, y_1)$, and $(x_2, y_2)$, via $$\begin{aligned} X_i &= x_0 \\ Y_i &= y_0 \\ A_i &= \displaystyle\frac{y_2 - y_0}{(x_1 - x_0)(y_2 - y_0) - (y_1 - y_0)(x_2 - x_0)} \\ B_i &= \displaystyle\frac{x_0 - x_2}{(x_1 - x_0)(y_2 - y_0) - (y_1 - y_0)(x_2 - x_0)} \\ C_i &= \displaystyle\frac{y_0 - y_1}{(x_1 - x_0)(y_2 - y_0) - (y_1 - y_0)(x_2 - x_0)} \\ D_i &= \displaystyle\frac{x_1 - x_0}{(x_1 - x_0)(y_2 - y_0) - (y_1 - y_0)(x_2 - x_0)} \\ \end{aligned}$$ This is numerically stable and accurate with floating-point numbers (noting that it will fail for degenerate triangles, because the denominator will be zero), and fast enough to find the correct source triangle when given an arbitrary point $(x, y)$ that may or may not be inside the polygon.
When the source triangle $i$ is known, the inverse is trivial. The point corresponding to $(u, v)$ in the target triangle with vertices at $(x_0, y_0)$, $(x_1, y_1)$, $(x_2, y_2)$, is $$\left\lbrace\begin{aligned} x &= (1 - u - v) x_0 + u x_1 + v x_2 \\ y &= (1 - u - v) y_0 + u y_1 + v y_2 \\ \end{aligned}\right.$$ which is also numerically stable for points within the triangle.
Therefore, for each triangle, you'll need to store the vertex coordinates and the four helper constants, for a total of ten floating-point numbers (scalars) per triangle.
Whenever you have two corresponding triangles (no matter which is source and which target), choose the base vertex so that it is closest to a right angle in both triangles, to maximize numerical stability.
While there probably is an algorithm for obtaining a similar triangulation for two arbitrary polygons, I personally do not know it; hopefully others will pipe up and suggest some.