Domain Connected Graph: the Essential Skeleton of a 3D Shape

Authors: Fu-Che Wu, Wan-Chun Ma, Rung-Huei Liang, Bing-Yu Chen, Ming Ouhyoung

In previous research, three main approaches were used to solve the skeleton extraction problem: Medial Axis Transform (MAT), Generalized Potential Field, and Decomposition based methods. The three different approaches focus respectively on surface variation, inside energy distribution and the connectivity of parts. Since a 3D object may be composed of the above three properties, we combine these three ideas to form a novel structure inside an object to represent the object's essential skeleton. In this paper, a skeleton can be composed by end points, connection points and joint points, which are the most important positions to depict an object. In order to maintain stability, we introduce a essential domain ball and a level iso-surface function based on repulsive force field and also define a neighborhood relationship inherited from the surface to describe the connecting relation of these positions. Based on this relation, we construct a Domain Connected Graph (DCG), which preserves the topology information of a 3D shape. The proposed DCG is a concise representation and less sensitive to the perturbation of shapes than that of MAT. Moreover, from the results of complicated 3D models consisting of thousands to millions of polygons, it is also meaningful and more conformed to human perception.

Using our result, a animation sequence is produced from Maya.

Here is sequence to describe each stage in our algorithm.