VRML animated model watermarking scheme using geometry and interpolator nodes

Distinct from image and video watermarking, a watermarking scheme for 3D animation content is required in the 3D industry market for various applications. This paper develops a watermarking scheme for copyright protection and authentication of 3D animation content. A 3D animated model generally has a hierarchical structure with a number of transform nodes of a geometry node and an interpolator node for the timeline in contrast to a 3D polygon mesh model. The proposed scheme embeds not only a robust watermark into the geometry node for copyright protection but also a fragile watermark into the position and orientation interpolators for content authentication. We named the former “robust geometry watermarking” and the latter “fragile interpolator watermarking”. The proposed scheme performs the two watermarking schemes independently to realize simultaneously robust and fragile watermarked 3D animated model. Experimental results confirm that a watermark embedded by geometry watermarking robust to many attacks from commercial 3D editing tools while a watermark embedded by interpolator watermarking fragile to the same attacks.