Geometry videos : a new representation for 3D animations

Animations of three-dimensional computer graphics are becoming an increasingly prevalent medium for communication. There are many sources of 3D animations including physical simulations, scientific visualizations, and classic key-frame animations generated by an artist. There are even computer vision systems available today that are capable of capturing 3D time-varying geometric models. In this research, we develop a new representation for an important class of 3D animations, specifically time-varying manifolds. We call this representation a "Geometry Video." At present, a viewer of a 3D animation must either have a similar simulation or animation infrastructure to the animation's producer, or the producer must create a video from a predefined set of viewpoints. Geometry videos provide the ability to encode and transmit a time-varying mesh in a generic, source-independent, and view-independent format. Geometry videos are created by constructing a global two-dimensional parametrization of a manifold over a rectangular domain. Time sequences of such parametrizations are particularly well-suited to compression using methods akin to video compression. This dissertation develops the techniques necessary to encode and compress arbitrary 3D manifold animations. A system is presented for converting animations into geometry videos as well as compressing and decompressing such representations. We also discusses the problems, design-parameters, and trade-offs associated with building such a system.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Briceño Pulido, Héctor Manuel, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Leonard McMillan, Seth Teller and Steven Gortler.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87447

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/87447