ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Box spline

A box spline is like a puzzle piece that fits together with other puzzle pieces to make a bigger puzzle. It's made up of smaller boxes that all come together to make a bigger shape.

Imagine you have a square piece of cardboard that you want to bend and shape into a 3D box. You can create this box shape using many smaller pieces of cardboard that all fit together like a puzzle. Each piece of cardboard is a box spline that makes up a small part of the overall box.

When using box splines in computer graphics, the smaller boxes are usually represented as mathematical functions. These functions are used to create smooth curves and shapes for objects like buildings, cars or characters in video games and movies.

Box splines are great for creating smooth curves and shapes that are easy for computers to work with. They are also useful because they can be easily combined and manipulated to create more complex 3D shapes. So, the next time you see a cool 3D object in a movie or video game, it might have been made using box splines as puzzle pieces!