System and method for performing domain decomposition for multiresolution surface analysis

Abstract

A computer-implemented method to process a model of an object includes mapping a mesh representation of the model onto a plane to form a planarized mesh; generating a shape image by associating a shape descriptor with each vertex of the planarized mesh; forming a color image of the planarized mesh by using the shape descriptor to encode a color of each mesh vertex; creating a region map of the color image corresponding to areas of small shape variation; fitting a coarse two dimensional mesh to the region map and computing a target representation from the coarse two dimensional mesh. In the presently preferred embodiment the target representation is expressed as a multiresolution subdivision surface representation. The shape descriptors can include surface normals obtained from the mesh representation and, more generally, can be descriptive of one of surface normal, Gaussian curvature, mean curvature, shape index and curvedness. The colors assigned to the vertices therefore correspond to properties of the three dimensional surface of the object model. Creating the region map includes performing a color segmentation procedure, and in the preferred embodiment identifies clusters of mesh faces corresponding to portions of the mesh in which vertices have approximately the same value of shape descriptor. The process of creating the region map preferably identifies clusters of mesh faces corresponding to connected sets of faces representing aggregate properties of the mesh.