Curve and surface modeling based on splines or other types of basis functions is a common practice in industry. It is desirable for the basis functions interpolating the control points to be smoothly continuous, and not oscillating, and to have local support. These conditions often conflict with each other, and the state-of-the-art interpolating functions do not achieve all of them.

This paper provides an excellent solution. Through a magical combination of the sinc function with Gaussian functions, the resulting basis functions satisfy all of the above conditions and facilitate user design, since the functions are interpolatory and have very local support.

This is a must-read paper for researchers in the fields of computer-aided design and manufacturing, and in the game and movie industries.