Multi-resolution surface description of 3D objects by shape-adaptive triangular meshes

Automatic 3D object modeling is a problem to be solved for many vision applications. In this paper, we propose a method of constructing a B-rep model of a 3D object from multi-view range images by utilizing a dynamic balloon scheme. The model is represented with triangular meshes, and by dynamic subdivision of the triangles, the meshes can approximate the local shapes adaptively. Moreover, it is also possible to derive a hierarchical mesh representation, which is controlled by a sequence of prescribed error tolerances. Results of experiments using real range images are presented to show the practical feasibility of the method.