System and method to obtain surface structures of multi-dimensional objects, and to represent those surface structures for animation, transmission and display
First Claim
1. A method of preparing data for displaying a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, the method comprising the steps of:
- obtaining an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of the surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information preferably comprising representations of up to (n−
1) incoming and/or up to (n−
1) outgoing directions towards 2*(n−
1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−
1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Four related but independent aspects are described: (1) a method and a system to derive mesh surface descriptions (also called connectivity-wireframes) from objects represented as a scalar field (e.g. discrete multi-dimensional data), scalar functions (e.g. implicit surfaces) or any other surface description, (2) a compact, optionally multi-scalable, optionally view-dependent, optionally animation-friendly, multi-dimensional surface representation method and system comprising a combination of a surface mesh description associated with a reference grid, (3) a digital coding and decoding method and system of a combined surface mesh representation with connectivity information and a reference grid, and (4) a method and system for conversion of other surface descriptions to the combined surface mesh representation and reference grid. The presentation of the surface of an object may be transmitted across a communications channel by means of a bit stream.
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Citations
26 Claims
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1. A method of preparing data for displaying a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, the method comprising the steps of:
obtaining an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of the surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information preferably comprising representations of up to (n−
1) incoming and/or up to (n−
1) outgoing directions towards 2*(n−
1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−
1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node.- View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 26)
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11. A system for preparing digital data for displaying a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:
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means for obtaining an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of the surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information preferably comprising representations of up to (n−
1) incoming and/or up to (n-1) outgoing directions towards 2*(n−
1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−
1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node; and
means for generating a polygonal representation of the surface of the object from the plurality of boundary nodes and the connectivity information of those boundary nodes. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13)
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14. A decoder for receiving a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:
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means for receiving the bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, means for initializing an n-dimensional mesh at a first resolution;
means for reading the representation of the at least one boundary node;
means for reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and for initializing nodes of the mesh in accordance with the connectivity information. - View Dependent Claims (15)
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16. A method of decoding a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:
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receiving a bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, initializing a grid at a first resolution;
reading the representation of the at least one boundary node;
reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and initializing boundary nodes within the grid in accordance with the connectivity information. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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23. A coder for preparing data for displaying a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, the coder comprising:
means for generating an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of the surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information preferably comprising representations of up to (n−
1) incoming and/or up to (n−
1) outgoing directions towards 2*(n−
1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−
1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node.
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24. A bit-stream coding an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of a surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information preferably comprising representations of up to (n−
- 1) incoming and/or up to (n−
1) outgoing directions towards 2*(n−
1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−
1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node;
the bit-stream comprising;
a representation of at least one boundary node and the connectivity information of a plurality of boundary nodes as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach the plurality of other boundary nodes.
- 1) incoming and/or up to (n−
Specification