April 2002

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Several closely related methods have been proposed in recent years to smooth, denoise, edit, compress, transmit, and animate very large polygon meshes, based on topological and combinatorial methods, signal processing techniques, constrained energy minimization, and the solution of diffusion differential equations. In particular, polygon models, which are used in most graphics applications, require considerable amounts of storage, even when they only approximate precise shapes with limited accuracy. To support internet access to 3D models of complex virtual environments or assemblies for electronic shopping, collaborative CAD, multi-player video games, scientific visualization, representations of 3D shapes must be compressed by several orders of magnitude. In this talk I will describe my approach to signal processing on meshes and schemes for lossy and loss-less compression of triangle and polygonal meshes, including progressive methods. If time allows, I will also give a short overview of recent projects, including the scanning of Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta, contributions to the MPEG-4 standardization effort, IBM's HotMedia, and the implementation of a 3D digital camera.

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Last Updated: April 17, 2002