Emerging technologies are therefore leading us
to a gradual, but inescapable integration of our
material and digital realities and the advent of
cyber-physical worlds.2
Although attaining visual
realism is within the grasp of current 3D modeling
approaches, it is less clear whether current modeling
techniques will accommodate the needs of human
communication and of the applications that
we can already envisage in those futuristic worlds.
Inspired by the evolution trends of the Web, this
article describes the evolution of shape modeling
from the Shape 1.0 geometry-only, mesh-based
stage to the forthcoming semantics-driven Shape
4.0 era, which is needed to ful ll the requirements
of the future