Ear-to-ear Capture of Facial Intrinsics

We present a practical approach to capturing ear-to-ear face models comprising both 3D meshes and intrinsic textures (i.e. diffuse and specular albedo). Our approach is a hybrid of geometric and photometric methods and requires no geometric calibration. Photometric measurements made in a lightstage are used to estimate view dependent high resolution normal maps. We overcome the problem of having a single photometric viewpoint by capturing in multiple poses. We use uncalibrated multiview stereo to estimate a coarse base mesh to which the photometric views are registered. We propose a novel approach to robustly stitching surface normal and intrinsic texture data into a seamless, complete and highly detailed face model. The resulting relightable models provide photorealistic renderings in any view

Interactive Geometry Remeshing

We present a novel technique, both flexible and efficient, for interactive remeshing of irregular geometry. First, the original (arbitrary genus) mesh is substituted by a series of 2D maps in parameter space. Using these maps, our algorithm is then able to take advantage of established signal processing and halftoning tools that offer real-time interaction and intricate control. The user can easily combine these maps to create a control map – a map which controls the sampling density over the surface patch. This map is then sampled at interactive rates allowing the user to easily design a tailored resampling. Once this sampling is complete, a Delaunay triangulation and fast optimization are performed to perfect the final mesh. As a result, our remeshing technique is extremely versatile and general, being able to produce arbitrarily complex meshes with a variety of properties including: uniformity, regularity, semiregularity, curvature sensitive resampling, and feature preservation. We provide a high level of control over the sampling distribution allowing the user to interactively custom design the mesh based on their requirements thereby increasing their productivity in creating a wide variety of meshes

Developing Interaction 3D Models for E-Learning Applications

Some issues concerning the development of interactive 3D models for e-learning applications are considered. Given that 3D data sets are normally large and interactive display demands high performance computation, a natural solution would be placing the computational burden on the client machine rather than on the server. Mozilla and Google opted for a combination of client-side languages, JavaScript and OpenGL, to handle 3D graphics in a web browser (Mozilla 3D and O3D respectively). Based on the O3D model, core web technologies are considered and an example of the full process involving the generation of a 3D model and their interactive visualization in a web browser is described. The challenging issue of creating realistic 3D models of objects in the real world is discussed and a method based on line projection for fast 3D reconstruction is presented. The generated model is then visualized in a web browser. The experiments demonstrate that visualization of 3D data in a web browser can provide quality user experience. Moreover, the development of web applications are facilitated by O3D JavaScript extension allowing web designers to focus on 3D contents generation

Architectural Digital Photogrammetry

This study is to exploit texturing techniques of a common modelling software in the way of creating virtual models of an exist architectures using oriented panoramas. In this research, The panoramic image-based interactive modelling is introduced as assembly point of photography, topography, photogrammetry and modelling techniques. It is an interactive system for generating photorealistic, textured 3D models of architectural structures and urban scenes. The technique is suitable for the architectural survey because it is not a «point by point» survey, and it exploit the geometrical constraints in the architecture to simplify modelling. Many factors are presented to be critical features that affect the modelling quality and accuracy, such as the way and the position in shooting the photos, stitching the multi-image panorama photos, the orientation, texturing techniques and so on. During the last few years, many Image-based modelling programmes have been released. Whereas, in this research, the photo modelling programs was not in use, it meant to face the fundamentals of the photogrammetry and to go beyond the limitations of such software by avoiding the automatism. In addition, it meant to exploit the potent commands of a program as 3DsMax to obtain the final representation of the Architecture. Such representation can be used in different fields (from detailed architectural survey to an architectural representation in cinema and video games), considering the accuracy and the quality which they are vary too. After the theoretical studies of this technique, it was applied in four applications to different types of close range surveys. This practice allowed to comprehend the practical problems in the whole process (from photographing all the way to modelling) and to propose the methods in the ways to improve it and to avoid any complications. It was compared with the laser scanning to study the accuracy of this technique. Thus, it is realized that not only the accuracy of this technique is linked to the size of the surveyed object, but also the size changes the way in which the survey to be approached. Since the 3D modelling program is not dedicated to be used for the image-based modelling, texturing problems was faced. It was analyzed in: how the program can behave with the Bitmap, how to project it, how it could be an interactive projection, and what are the limitations

3D Point Cloud Data and Triangle Face Compression by a Novel Geometry Minimization Algorithm and Comparison with other 3D Formats

Polygonal meshes remain the primary representation for visualization of 3D data in a wide range of industries including manufacturing, architecture, geographic information systems, medical imaging, robotics, entertainment, and military applications. Because of its widespread use, it is desirable to compress polygonal meshes stored in file servers and exchanged over computer networks to reduce storage and transmission time requirements. 3D files encoded by OBJ format are commonly used to share models due to its clear simple design. Normally each OBJ file contains a large amount of data (e.g. vertices and triangulated faces) describing the mesh surface. In this research we introduce a novel algorithm to compress vertices and triangle faces called Geometry Minimization Algorithm (GM-Algorithm). First, each vertex consists of (x, y, z) coordinates that are encoded into a single value by the GM-Algorithm. Second, triangle faces are encoded by computing the differences between two adjacent vertex locations, and then coded by the GM-Algorithm followed by arithmetic coding. We tested the method on large data sets achieving high compression ratios over 90% while keeping the same number of vertices and triangle faces as the original mesh. The decompression step is based on a Parallel Fast Matching Search Algorithm (Parallel-FMS) to recover the structure of the 3D mesh. A comparative analysis of compression ratios is provided with a number of commonly used 3D file formats such as MATLAB, VRML, OpenCTM and STL showing the advantages and effectiveness of our approach

Three-dimensional modeling of the human jaw/teeth using optics and statistics.

Object modeling is a fundamental problem in engineering, involving talents from computer-aided design, computational geometry, computer vision and advanced manufacturing. The process of object modeling takes three stages: sensing, representation, and analysis. Various sensors may be used to capture information about objects; optical cameras and laser scanners are common with rigid objects, while X-ray, CT and MRI are common with biological organs. These sensors may provide a direct or an indirect inference about the object, requiring a geometric representation in the computer that is suitable for subsequent usage. Geometric representations that are compact, i.e., capture the main features of the objects with a minimal number of data points or vertices, fall into the domain of computational geometry. Once a compact object representation is in the computer, various analysis steps can be conducted, including recognition, coding, transmission, etc. The subject matter of this dissertation is object reconstruction from a sequence of optical images using shape from shading (SFS) and SFS with shape priors. The application domain is dentistry. Most of the SFS approaches focus on the computational part of the SFS problem, i.e. the numerical solution. As a result, the imaging model in most conventional SFS algorithms has been simplified under three simple, but restrictive assumptions: (1) the camera performs an orthographic projection of the scene, (2) the surface has a Lambertian reflectance and (3) the light source is a single point source at infinity. Unfortunately, such assumptions are no longer held in the case of reconstruction of real objects as intra-oral imaging environment for human teeth. In this work, we introduce a more realistic formulation of the SFS problem by considering the image formation components: the camera, the light source, and the surface reflectance. This dissertation proposes a non-Lambertian SFS algorithm under perspective projection which benefits from camera calibration parameters. The attenuation of illumination is taken account due to near-field imaging. The surface reflectance is modeled using the Oren-Nayar-Wolff model which accounts for the retro-reflection case. In this context, a new variational formulation is proposed that relates an evolving surface model with image information, taking into consideration that the image is taken by a perspective camera with known parameters. A new energy functional is formulated to incorporate brightness, smoothness and integrability constraints. In addition, to further improve the accuracy and practicality of the results, 3D shape priors are incorporated in the proposed SFS formulation. This strategy is motivated by the fact that humans rely on strong prior information about the 3D world around us in order to perceive 3D shape information. Such information is statistically extracted from training 3D models of the human teeth. The proposed SFS algorithms have been used in two different frameworks in this dissertation: a) holistic, which stitches a sequence of images in order to cover the entire jaw, and then apply the SFS, and b) piece-wise, which focuses on a specific tooth or a segment of the human jaw, and applies SFS using physical teeth illumination characteristics. To augment the visible portion, and in order to have the entire jaw reconstructed without the use of CT or MRI or even X-rays, prior information were added which gathered from a database of human jaws. This database has been constructed from an adult population with variations in teeth size, degradation and alignments. The database contains both shape and albedo information for the population. Using this database, a novel statistical shape from shading (SSFS) approach has been created. Extending the work on human teeth analysis, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is adapted for analyzing and calculating stresses and strains of dental structures. Previous Finite Element (FE) studies used approximate 2D models. In this dissertation, an accurate three-dimensional CAD model is proposed. 3D stress and displacements of different teeth type are successfully carried out. A newly developed open-source finite element solver, Finite Elements for Biomechanics (FEBio), has been used. The limitations of the experimental and analytical approaches used for stress and displacement analysis are overcome by using FEA tool benefits such as dealing with complex geometry and complex loading conditions

Strengthening of flat slabs with reinforced concrete overlay – Analysis and development of the solution

Strengthening of concrete structures with a new concrete layer has been commonly used for columns, beams and slabs. This technique is economic and efficient for structural strengthening since it uses the same base materials, steel and concrete. It is usually applied on the compressed face of the concrete element due to concrete’s recognized behaviour under compression, posing several challenges to control cracking and resistance when applied on the tensile face. Strengthening of concrete structures with a new concrete layer applied on the tensile face requires controlling the debonding phenomenon of added concrete for service and ultimate limit states. Designing such strengthening solution requires the consideration for the strength of the global structure and the local interface capacity for maintaining structural integrity throughout the load history. Such requirement leads to the need for interface detailing solutions between the two concrete layers that improve the behaviour of the composite section, namely the roughening of the existing surface and stitching reinforcement. The knowledge from studying such interface was applied to the strengthening of slab specimens. This work presents the study performed on concrete unidirectional slab specimens and on columnsupported slab specimens. All specimens were strengthened with a reinforced concrete overlay on the tensile face. The former consisted on the flexural monotonic loading of the specimens until failure, and the latter consisted on specimens loaded monotonically and concentrically until failure. The calibration of numerical models based on experimental test results was also performed with the nonlinear analysis software ATENA 3D®. All results were then compared to current codes and regulations, and some guidelines were defined for the correct application of strengthening with a reinforced concrete overlay on existing structures