3D surface filtering using spherical harmonics

This paper presents a novel approach for 3D surface filtering over two-manifold meshes. A robust spherical parameterization algorithm is proposed to transform the input surface into a spherical vector function/signal. This signal is then decomposed into frequency domain using spherical harmonic transforms. Finally, traditional filtering techniques are generalized to process such spherical signals in either the frequency or spatial domain. Our major contribution is the two-phase spherical parameterization algorithm, which can handle meshes with complex shapes by incorporating local parameterization into the progressive mesh. A number of experimental examples demonstrate the potential of our algorithm.