Method and apparatus for rendering 3-D surfaces from 2-D filtered silhouettes
US6317139A · kind A · utility
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 25, 1998 |
| Grant date | Nov 13, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 25, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T17/10
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A gradient-based silhouette projection method for rendering the surface of a 3-D object is described herein. A set of imaging points is selected for imaging the object. The object is imaged from each of the selected imaging points to generate a set of images and a set of binary silhouettes are extracted from the images of the object, with at least one silhouette per image. The binary silhouettes are each filtered to generate an equal number of gradient silhouettes. Each of the gradient silhouettes is projected to generate a set of gradient volume projections that are combined to yield a single combined gradient volume. A 3-D isosurface is generated from the combined gradient volume, with the 3-D isosurface thereby representing the 3-D object. In one example described herein, the binary silhouettes are filtered to generate gradient silhouettes by determining tubular neighborhoods for the binary silhouettes. The gradient volume projections are represented by voxels. The 3-D isosurface is determined from the combined gradient volume by applying a marching cubes algorithm to the voxels representing the combined gradient volume. A set of polygons representing the 3-D isosurface is gener…
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