Robust coding of 3D graphic models using mesh segmentation and data partitioning

Current coding techniques for 3D graphic models focus more on coding efficiency, which makes them extremely sensitive to channel errors due to the irregular nature of the mesh structure. In this paper, we propose a robust mesh partitioning scheme which can reduce the error propagation length and allow a piecewise reconstruction of the original mesh while maintaining a high compression ratio. Our method first segments an arbitrary 3D mesh into a set of independent connected components. Each component is further segmented into several independent 3D pieces based on the error rate. Joint boundary information is efficiently coded which will be used to stick segmented pieces together. All resulting pieces are grouped by their sizes to keep each group as a basic unit which has a near equal length, which is determined by the error rate. The data partitioning technique is finally used to keep track of each group of pieces. Errors are thus limited to each group, and can be corrected easily. The proposed technique can also be used in graphic editing, partial texture mapping and other applications.