4392406
Synthesis and rendering of bidirectional texture functions on arbitrary surfaces
The bidirectional texture function (BTF) is a 6D function that describes the appearance of a real-world surface as a function of lighting and viewing directions. The BTF can model the fine-scale shadows, occlusions, and specularities caused by surface mesostructures. We present algorithms for efficient synthesis of BTFs on arbitrary surfaces and for hardware-accelerated rendering. For both synthesis and rendering, a main challenge is handling the large amount of data in a BTF sample. To addresses this challenge, we approximate the BTF sample by a small number of 4D point appearance functions (PAFs) multiplied by 2D geometry maps. The geometry maps and PAFs lead to efficient synthesis and fast rendering of BTFs on arbitrary surfaces. For synthesis, a surface BTF can be generated by applying a texton-based synthesis algorithm to a small set of 2D geometry maps while leaving the companion 4D PAFs untouched. As for rendering, a surface BTF synthesized using geometry maps is well-suited for leveraging the programmable vertex and pixel shaders on the graphics hardware. We present a real-time BTF rendering algorithm that runs at the speed of about 30 frames/second on a mid-level PC with an ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our synthesis and rendering algorithms using both real and synthetic BTF samples.
2304584
Directional histogram model for three-dimensional shape similarity
In this paper, we propose a novel shape representation we call directional histogram model (DHM). It captures the shape variation of an object and is invariant to scaling and rigid transforms. The DHM is computed by first extracting a directional distribution of thickness histogram signatures, which are translation invariant. We show how the extraction of the thickness histogram distribution can be accelerated using conventional graphics hardware. Orientation invariance is achieved by computing the spherical harmonic transform of this distribution. Extensive experiments show that the DHM is capable of high discrimination power and is robust to noise.
16862069
Progressive geometry compression for meshes
A novel progressive geometry compression scheme is presented in this paper. In this scheme, a mesh is represented as a base mesh followed by some groups of vertex split operations using an improved simplification method in which each level of the mesh can be refined into the next level by carrying out a group of vertex split operations in any order. Consequently, the progressive mesh (PM) representation can be effectively encoded by permuting the vertex split operations in each group. Meanwhile, a geometry predictor using the Laplacian operator is designed to predict each new vertex position using its neighbours. The correction is quantized and encoded using a Huffman coding scheme. Experimental results show that our algorithm obtains higher compression ratios than previous work. It is very suitable for the progressive transmission of geometric models over the Internet.
8994921
Large mesh deformation using the volumetric graph Laplacian
We present a novel technique for large deformations on 3D meshes using the volumetric graph Laplacian. We first construct a graph representing the volume inside the input mesh. The graph need not form a solid meshing of the input mesh's interior; its edges simply connect nearby points in the volume. This graph's Laplacian encodes volumetric details as the difference between each point in the graph and the average of its neighbors. Preserving these volumetric details during deformation imposes a volumetric constraint that prevents unnatural changes in volume. We also include in the graph points a short distance outside the mesh to avoid local self-intersections. Volumetric detail preservation is represented by a quadric energy function. Minimizing it preserves details in a least-squares sense, distributing error uniformly over the whole deformed mesh. It can also be combined with conventional constraints involving surface positions, details or smoothness, and efficiently minimized by solving a sparse linear system.We apply this technique in a 2D curve-based deformation system allowing novice users to create pleasing deformations with little effort. A novel application of this system is to apply nonrigid and exaggerated deformations of 2D cartoon characters to 3D meshes. We demonstrate our system's potential with several examples.
6185811
An efficient large deformation method using domain decomposition
Efficiently simulating large deformations of flexible objects is a challenging problem in computer graphics. In this paper, we present a physically based approach to this problem, using the linear elasticity model and a finite elements method. To handle large deformations in the linear elasticity model, we exploit the domain decomposition method, based on the observation that each sub-domain undergoes a relatively small local deformation, involving a global rigid transformation. In order to efficiently solve the deformation at each simulation time step, we pre-compute the object responses in terms of displacement accelerations to the forces acting on each node, yielding a force-displacement matrix. However, the force-displacement matrix could be too large to handle for densely tessellated objects. To address this problem, we present two methods. The first method exploits spatial coherence to compress the force-displacement matrix using the clustered principal component analysis method; and the second method pre-computes only the force-displacement vectors for the boundary vertices of the sub-domains and resorts to the Cholesky factorization to solve the acceleration for the internal vertices of the sub-domains. Finally, we present some experimental results to show the large deformation effects and fast performance on complex large scale objects under interactive user manipulations.
44899292
Subspace gradient domain mesh deformation
In this paper we present a general framework for performing constrained mesh deformation tasks with gradient domain techniques. We present a gradient domain technique that works well with a wide variety of linear and nonlinear constraints. The constraints we introduce include the nonlinear volume constraint for volume preservation, the nonlinear skeleton constraint for maintaining the rigidity of limb segments of articulated figures, and the projection constraint for easy manipulation of the mesh without having to frequently switch between multiple viewpoints. To handle nonlinear constraints, we cast mesh deformation as a nonlinear energy minimization problem and solve the problem using an iterative algorithm. The main challenges in solving this nonlinear problem are the slow convergence and numerical instability of the iterative solver. To address these issues, we develop a subspace technique that builds a coarse control mesh around the original mesh and projects the deformation energy and constraints onto the control mesh vertices using the mean value interpolation. The energy minimization is then carried out in the subspace formed by the control mesh vertices. Running in this subspace, our energy minimization solver is both fast and stable and it provides interactive responses. We demonstrate our deformation constraints and subspace deformation technique with a variety of constrained deformation examples.
27917358
Continuous dependence on initial values for impulsive delay differential equations
This paper studies the property of continuous dependence of solutions with respect to initial values for impulsive delay differential equations. Criteria on continuous dependence of solutions with respect to initial functions are established. It is shown, however, that due to the discontinuities of the function space and the time delays in the system, continuous dependence with respect to the initial time, or more generally with respect to the entire initial data, is unfortunately not generally satisfied.
32095656
Analyzing Outliers Cautiously
Outliers are difficult to handle because some of them can be measurement errors, while others may represent phenomena of interest, something "significant" from the viewpoint of the application domain. Statistical and computational methods have been proposed to detect outliers, but further analysis of outliers requires much relevant domain knowledge. In our previous work (1994), we suggested a knowledge-based method for distinguishing between the measurement errors and phenomena of interest by modeling "real measurements" - how measurements should be distributed in an application domain. In this paper, we make this distinction by modeling measurement errors instead. This is a cautious approach to outlier analysis, which has been successfully applied to a medical problem and may find interesting applications in other domains such as science, engineering, finance, and economics.
23517581
Global exponential stability of high order Hopfield type neural networks
This paper studies the problem of global exponential stability for a class of high order Hopfield type neural networks. By utilizing Lyapunov functions, several sufficient conditions for the global exponential stability of equilibrium point are obtained. The exponential convergence rate of the equilibrium point is also estimated. As a special case, several new criteria on global exponential stability for the corresponding first order Hopfield neural networks are obtained. Those criteria generalize some of the recent results reported in the literature.
14510898
Evolutionary learning of dynamic probabilistic models with large time lags
In this paper, we explore the automatic explanation of multivariate time series (MTS) through learning dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). We have developed an evolutionary algorithm which exploits certain characteristics of MTS in order to generate good networks as quickly as possible. We compare this algorithm to other standard learning algorithms that have traditionally been used for static Bayesian networks but are adapted for DBNs in this paper. These are extensively tested on both synthetic and real-world MTS for various aspects of efficiency and accuracy. By proposing a simple representation scheme, an efficient learning methodology, and several useful heuristics, we have found that the proposed method is more efficient for learning DBNs from MTS with large time lags, especially in time-demanding situations. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
16232707
A weighted sum validity function for clustering with a hybrid niching genetic algorithm
Clustering is inherently a difficult problem, both with respect to the construction of adequate objective functions as well as to the optimization of the objective functions. In this paper, we suggest an objective function called the Weighted Sum Validity Function (WSVF), which is a weighted sum of the several normalized cluster validity functions. Further, we propose a Hybrid Niching Genetic Algorithm (HNGA), which can be used for the optimization of the WSVF to automatically evolve the proper number of clusters as well as appropriate partitioning of the data set. Within the HNGA, a niching method is developed to preserve both the diversity of the population with respect to the number of clusters encoded in the individuals and the diversity of the subpopulation with the same number of clusters during the search. In addition, we hybridize the niching method with the k-means algorithm. In the experiments, we show the effectiveness of both the HNGA and the WSVF. In comparison with other related genetic clustering algorithms, the HNGA can consistently and efficiently converge to the best known optimum corresponding to the given data in concurrence with the convergence result. The WSVF is found generally able to improve the confidence of clustering solutions and achieve more accurate and robust results.