Data compression for real-time streaming of deformable 3D models for 3D animation

摘要

Systems and methods are described for performing spatial and temporal compression of deformable mesh based representations of 3D character motion allowing the visualization of high-resolution 3D character animations in real time. In a number of embodiments, the deformable mesh based representation of the 3D character motion is used to automatically generate an interconnected graph based representation of the same 3D character motion. The interconnected graph based representation can include an interconnected graph that is used to drive mesh clusters during the rendering of a 3D character animation. The interconnected graph based representation provides spatial compression of the deformable mesh based representation, and further compression can be achieved by applying temporal compression processes to the time-varying behavior of the mesh clusters. Even greater compression can be achieved by eliminating redundant data from the file format containing the interconnected graph based representation of the 3D character motion that would otherwise be repeatedly provided to a game engine during rendering, and by applying loss-less data compression to the data of the file itself.

主权项

1. A process for compressing a deformable mesh based representation of 3D character motion, comprising:
repeatedly specifying parameters for an interconnected graph based representation of portions of the 3D character motion wherein the parameters include a maximum number of mesh clusters used to generate the interconnected graph based representation of the portion of the 3D character motion, wherein the extent of the compression that is achieved is determined by the number of the maximum number of mesh clusters and the frequency with which the interconnected graph is updated; automatically identifying mesh clusters within the deformable mesh based representation of each portion of the 3D character motion wherein the number of automatically identified mesh clusters is limited to the maximum number of mesh clusters specified for the portion of the 3D character motion; automatically generating an interconnected graph based representation of each portion of the 3D character motion based upon the motion of the mesh clusters during the portion of the 3D character motion; performing a temporal compression process on the time-varying behavior of the interconnected graph based representations of the portions of the 3D character motion; and writing the compressed interconnected graph based representations of each portion of the 3D character motion to a file located on a storage device.