Spectral Geometry Image: Image Based 3D Models for Digital Broadcasting Applications

The use of 3D models for progressive transmission and broadcasting applications is an interesting challenge due to the nature and complexity of such content. In this paper, a new image format for the representation of 3D progressive model is proposed. The powerful spectral analysis is combined with the state of art Geometry Image(GI) to encode static 3D models into spectral geometry images(SGI) for robust 3D shape representation. Based on the 3D model's surface characteristics, SGI separated the geometrical image into low and high frequency layers to achieve effective Level of Details(LOD) modeling. For SGI, the connectivity data of the model is implicitly encoded in the image, thus removing the need for additional channel bits allocated for its protection during transmission. We demonstrated that by coupling SGI together with an efficient channel allocation scheme, an image based method for 3D representation suitable for adoption in conventional broadcasting standard is proposed. The proposed framework is effective in ensuring the smooth degradation of progressive 3D models across varying channel bandwidths and packet loss conditions.