Efficient generation of object hierarchies from 3D scenes

Describes an efficient technique for computing a hierarchical representation of the objects contained in a complex 3D scene. First, an adjacency graph keeping the costs of grouping the different pairs of objects in the scene is built. Then the minimum spanning tree (MST) of that graph is determined. A binary clustering tree (BCT) is obtained from the MST. Finally, a merging stage joins the adjacent nodes in the BCT which have similar costs. The final result is an n-ary tree which defines an intuitive clustering of the objects of the scene at different levels of abstraction. Experimental results with synthetic 3D scenes are presented.