Abstract: A method of generating a morphing sequence utilizing a computer, the method comprising the step of user-defining respective components in a source object and a target object respectively, wherein each component comprises a plurality of local features of respective source and target meshes representing the source and target objects, and user-defining corresponding components between the source object and the target object. The method may further comprise the step of computer-deducing correspondences between components in the source and target objects based on the user-defined correspondences between other components.

Abstract: This invention presents a method to extract atomic parts of a graphics model using its skeleton. A skeleton is a fully collapsed body of the model, and is obtained through a novel way to contract edges of the model. From the skeleton, atomic parts or features each is a part of the model that is distinctively autonomous from its connected or neighboring body is formed through space sweeping. Next, atomic parts can be connected into a hierarchy depending on the eventual interactive visualization applications. The operation of the method includes the steps of interactively computing, displaying and recording skeleton, atomic parts, and object hierarchies in response to user commands to, for example, modifying skeleton, atomic parts or object hierarchies. Object hierarchies are useful to various applications such as object scene management, view-dependent simplification, mesh-mapping, morphing, and building bounding volume hierarchies.

Abstract: This invention integrates model simplification and bounding volume hierarchy construction for collision detection in interactive 3D graphics. In particular, it provides general framework and a preferred method to construct bounding volume hierarchy using outputs of model simplification. Simplified models, besides their application to multi-resolution rendering, can provide clues to the shape of the input object. These clues help in the partitioning of the object's model into components that may be more tightly bounded by simple bounding volumes. The framework and method naturally employ both the bottom-up and the top-down approaches of hierarchy building, and thus can have the advantages of both approaches. The framework and method includes the steps of simplified models generation, component derivation, component tree generation, and bounding volume hierarchy generation.

Abstract: This invention presents a method to extract atomic parts of a graphics model using its skeleton. A skeleton is a fully collapsed body of the model, and is obtained through a novel way to contract edges of the model. From the skeleton, atomic parts or features each is a part of the model that is distinctively autonomous from its connected or neighboring body is formed through space sweeping. Next, atomic parts can be connected into a hierarchy depending on the eventual interactive visualization applications. The operation of the method includes the steps of interactively computing, displaying and recording skeleton, atomic parts, and object hierarchies in response to user commands to, for example, modifying skeleton, atomic parts or object hierarchies. Object hierarchies are useful to various applications such as object scene management, view-dependent simplification, mesh-mapping, morphing, and building bounding volume hierarchies.