Placing points according to distance map for meshing
For some topological map, there is a feature (such as a river). There is a corresponding file arranged in rows and columns, where each cell maps 1-1 with the corresponding pixel in the map and contains a value corresponding to the distance from the feature.
For the purposes of triangulation, what is the best way to place x, y points over this map, arranged in such a way that the points are closely packed where the distance is below some threshold, and packs further and further apart linearly with the distance up to some threshold distance?
Circle packing seems like the best option at this point, but I can't find compelling documentation on how this might be implemented for this use-case.
A decent example would be something like this, where circles are packed approximately according to intensity (and then points can be placed in the center of the circles):
A simple way is to place randomly sites then pick the greyscale value and feed it to a weighted triangulation with the distance function is the euklidian distance minus the weight. From the result pick the center of gravity from each triangle make it the new site and start again for x time. Source:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stippling