Geometric Flows of Curves in Shape Space for Processing Motion of Deformable Objects

We introduce techniques for the processing of motion and animations of non‐rigid shapes. The idea is to regard animations of deformable objects as curves in shape space. Then, we use the geometric structure on shape space to transfer concepts from curve processing in ?ⁿ to the processing of motion of non‐rigid shapes. Following this principle, we introduce a discrete geometric flow for curves in shape space. The flow iteratively replaces every shape with a weighted average shape of a local neighborhood and thereby globally decreases an energy whose minimizers are discrete geodesics in shape space. Based on the flow, we devise a novel smoothing filter for motions and animations of deformable shapes. By shortening the length in shape space of an animation, it systematically regularizes the deformations between consecutive frames of the animation. The scheme can be used for smoothing and noise removal, e.g., for reducing jittering artifacts in motion capture data. We introduce a reduced‐order method for the computation of the flow. In addition to being efficient for the smoothing of curves, it is a novel scheme for computing geodesics in shape space. We use the scheme to construct non‐linear “Bézier curves” by executing de Casteljau's algorithm in shape space.     

Robust Structure‐Based Shape Correspondence

We present a robust method to find region‐level correspondences between shapes, which are invariant to changes in geometry and applicable across multiple shape representations. We generate simplified shape graphs by jointly decomposing the shapes, and devise an adapted graph‐matching technique, from which we infer correspondences between shape regions. The simplified shape graphs are designed to primarily capture the overall structure of the shapes, without reflecting precise information about the geometry of each region, which enables us to find correspondences between shapes that might have significant geometric differences. Moreover, due to the special care we take to ensure the robustness of each part of our pipeline, our method can find correspondences between shapes with different representations, such as triangular meshes and point clouds. We demonstrate that the region‐wise matching that we obtain can be used to find correspondences between feature points, reveal the intrinsic self‐similarities of each shape and even construct point‐to‐point maps across shapes. Our method is both time and space efficient, leading to a pipeline that is significantly faster than comparable approaches. We demonstrate the performance of our approach through an extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation on several benchmarks where we achieve comparable or superior performance to existing methods.     

Flexible shape control for automatic resizing of apparel products

We provide a flexible shape control technique in this paper for the automatic resizing of apparel products. The automatic resizing function has become an essential part of the 3D garment CAD systems to generate user customized apparel products for individuals with variant body shapes. The human bodies are usually represented by piecewise linear mesh surfaces with consistent connectivity. The shape of apparel products can then be warped from the space around a human body to the space around another body by computing the new positions of points on apparel products. However, one major limitation of this kind of automatic resizing technique is that the apparel products are always distorted along the shape of the human bodies. This is a required deformation for tight clothes but not an expected result for other types of clothes. To solve this problem, we investigate a method to preserve the shape of user-defined features on the apparel products. As the apparel products are often represented by discrete surfaces with non-manifold entities, the existing mesh processing approaches that preserve the local shape cannot be applied here. A new algorithm consisting of three steps is developed in this paper. First, the apparel product is warped from the reference human body to the space around the target human body. Second, the shape of features is optimized to match their original shape before the warping. Lastly, discrete surfaces of the apparel product are deformed again under an optimization framework to match their original shapes locally while interpolating the shape of features determined in the previous step.     

联合骨架与边界特征的平面形状分解

在形状分析及其相关应用中,将形状分解成有意义的几个部分往往具有重要意义。骨架与轮廓都蕴含了丰富的物体形状全局与局部信息。提出一种联合骨架与边界特征的平面形状分解方法。该算法引入符合视觉特性的弯曲度比率作为约束,获得可控的分解结果以满足不同细节尺度的要求。算法充分利用对轮廓进行离散曲线演化时得到的信息,避免几个重要的部分被合并为一个整体。由于采用了鲁棒的骨架生成方法,使得算法对较高噪声干扰具有一定的鲁棒性,且能使得一个重要的部分不被进一步误分解。以MPEG7形状库等形状为实验对象,对算法的有效性进行了验证。分解实验结果均较为符合人类的主观感觉,同时对噪声污染的形状也具有较为鲁棒的结果。     

Generating shapes by analogies: An application to hearing aid design

3D shape modeling is a crucial component of rapid prototyping systems that customize shapes of implants and prosthetic devices to a patient’s anatomy. In this paper, we present a solution to the problem of customized 3D shape modeling using a statistical shape analysis framework. We design a novel method to learn the relationship between two classes of shapes, which are related by certain operations or transformation. The two associated shape classes are represented in a lower dimensional manifold, and the reduced set of parameters obtained in this subspace is utilized in an estimation, which is exemplified by a multivariate regression in this paper. We demonstrate our method with a felicitous application to the estimation of customized hearing aid devices.     

Snake pedals: compact and versatile geometric models withphysics-based control

We introduce a geometric shape modeling scheme which allows for representation of global and local shape characteristics of an object. Geometric models are well-suited for representing global shapes without local detail, but we propose a scheme which represents global shapes with local detail and permits model shaping as well as topological changes via physics-based control. The scheme represents shapes by pedal curves and surfaces, i.e. the loci of the foot of perpendiculars to the tangents of a fixed curve/surface from a fixed point called the pedal point. By varying the location of the pedal point, one can synthesize a large class of shapes which exhibit both local and global deformations. We introduce physics-based control for shaping these geometric models by letting the pedal point vary and use a snake to represent the position of this varying point. The model, a “snake pedal”, allows for interactive manipulation via forces applied to the snake. We develop a fast numerical iterative algorithm for shape recovery from image data using this scheme. The algorithm involves the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method in the outer loop for solving the global parameters and the alternating direction implicit (ADI) method in the inner loop for solving the local parameters of the model. The combination of the global and local scheme leads to an efficient numerical solution to the model fitting problem. We demonstrate the applicability of this modeling scheme via examples of shape synthesis and shape estimation from real image data     

Actions as space-time shapes

Human action in video sequences can be seen as silhouettes of a moving torso and protruding limbs undergoing articulated motion. We regard human actions as three-dimensional shapes induced by the silhouettes in the space-time volume. We adopt a recent approach for analyzing 2D shapes and generalize it to deal with volumetric space-time action shapes. Our method utilizes properties of the solution to the Poisson equation to extract space-time features such as local space-time saliency, action dynamics, shape structure and orientation. We show that these features are useful for action recognition, detection and clustering. The method is fast, does not require video alignment and is applicable in (but not limited to) many scenarios where the background is known. Moreover, we demonstrate the robustness of our method to partial occlusions, non-rigid deformations, significant changes in scale and viewpoint, high irregularities in the performance of an action, and low quality video.     

Thickness control in structural optimization via a level set method

In the context of structural optimization via a level-set method we propose a framework to handle geometric constraints related to a notion of local thickness. The local thickness is calculated using the signed distance function to the shape. We formulate global constraints using integral functionals and compute their shape derivatives. We discuss different strategies and possible approximations to handle the geometric constraints. We implement our approach in two and three space dimensions for a model of linearized elasticity. As can be expected, the resulting optimized shapes are strongly dependent on the initial guesses and on the specific treatment of the constraints since, in particular, some topological changes may be prevented by those constraints.     

Automatic 3D Shape Co-Segmentation Using Spectral Graph Method

Co-analyzing a set of 3D shapes is a challenging task considering a large geometrical variability of the shapes. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a new automatic 3D shape co-segmentation algorithm by using spectral graph method.Our method firstly represents input shapes as a set of weighted graphs and extracts multiple geometric features to measure the similarities of faces in each individual shape.Secondly all graphs are embedded into the spectral domain to find meaningful correspondences across the set.After that we build a joint weighted matrix for the graph set and then apply normalized cut criterion to find optimal co-segmentation of the input shapes.Finally we evaluate our approach on different categories of 3D shapes, and the experimental results demonstrate that our method can accurately co-segment a wide variety of shapes, which may have different poses and significant topology changes.     

Modeling of shape bifurcation phenomena in manipulations of deformable string objects

A systematic approach to the modeling of deformable string objects is presented. Various string objects such as cords and wires are manipulated in many manufacturing processes. In such processes, it is important for successful manipulation to evaluate their shapes on a computer in advance because their shapes can be changed easily even under the same conditions. We refer to the situation that a shape can be changed into another shape even under the same constraints as shape bifurcation. In this paper, we will develop an analytical model of the shape of string objects including shape bifurcation. First, we will investigate the mechanism of the shape bifurcation phenomena based on the potential energy. Then, we will propose a hypothesis on the mechanism of shape bifurcation based on local minima of the potential energy. Second, the potential energy of a string object and the geometric constraints imposed on it are formulated. The shape of the object can be derived by minimizing the potential energy under the geometric constraints. Thirdly, a procedure to compute the shape of a deformed string object is developed considering the local minima of the energy. Finally, we show some numerical examples with shape bifurcation using our proposed method. From the results, we conclude that our proposed method accurately describes deformed shapes of string objects including shape bifurcation.     

Interactive design of 2D car profiles with aerodynamic feedback

The design of car shapes requires a delicate balance between aesthetic and performance. While fluid simulation provides the means to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of a given shape, its computational cost hinders its usage during the early explorative phases of design, when aesthetic is decided upon. We present an interactive system to assist designers in creating aerodynamic car profiles. Our system relies on a neural surrogate model to predict fluid flow around car shapes, providing fluid visualization and shape optimization feedback to designers as soon as they sketch a car profile. Compared to prior work that focused on time-averaged fluid flows, we describe how to train our model on instantaneous, synchronized observations extracted from multiple pre-computed simulations, such that we can visualize and optimize for dynamic flow features, such as vortices. Furthermore, we architectured our model to support gradient-based shape optimization within a learned latent space of car profiles. In addition to regularizing the optimization process, this latent space and an associated encoder-decoder allows us to input and output car profiles in a bitmap form, without any explicit parameterization of the car boundary. Finally, we designed our model to support pointwise queries of fluid properties around car shapes, allowing us to adapt computational cost to application needs. As an illustration, we only query our model along streamlines for flow visualization, we query it in the vicinity of the car for drag optimization, and we query it behind the car for vortex attenuation.     

2D-Shape Analysis Using Conformal Mapping

The study of 2D shapes and their similarities is a central problem in the field of vision. It arises in particular from the task of classifying and recognizing objects from their observed silhouette. Defining natural distances between 2D shapes creates a metric space of shapes, whose mathematical structure is inherently relevant to the classification task. One intriguing metric space comes from using conformal mappings of 2D shapes into each other, via the theory of Teichmüller spaces. In this space every simple closed curve in the plane (a “shape”) is represented by a ‘fingerprint’ which is a diffeomorphism of the unit circle to itself (a differentiable and invertible, periodic function). More precisely, every shape defines to a unique equivalence class of such diffeomorphisms up to right multiplication by a Möbius map. The fingerprint does not change if the shape is varied by translations and scaling and any such equivalence class comes from some shape. This coset space, equipped with the infinitesimal Weil-Petersson (WP) Riemannian norm is a metric space. In this space, the shortest path between each two shapes is unique, and is given by a geodesic connecting them. Their distance from each other is given by integrating the WP-norm along that geodesic. In this paper we concentrate on solving the “welding” problem of “sewing” together conformally the interior and exterior of the unit circle, glued on the unit circle by a given diffeomorphism, to obtain the unique 2D shape associated with this diffeomorphism. This will allow us to go back and forth between 2D shapes and their representing diffeomorphisms in this “space of shapes”. We then present an efficient method for computing the unique shortest path, the geodesic of shape morphing between each two end-point shapes. The group of diffeomorphisms of S¹ acts as a group of isometries on the space of shapes and we show how this can be used to define shape transformations, like for instance ‘adding a protruding limb’ to any shape.     

Shape retrieval using triangle-area representation and dynamic space warping

In this paper, we present a shape retrieval method using triangle-area representation for nonrigid shapes with closed contours. The representation utilizes the areas of the triangles formed by the boundary points to measure the convexity/concavity of each point at different scales (or triangle side lengths). This representation is effective in capturing both local and global characteristics of a shape, invariant to translation, rotation, and scaling, and robust against noise and moderate amounts of occlusion. In the matching stage, a dynamic space warping (DSW) algorithm is employed to search efficiently for the optimal (least cost) correspondence between the points of two shapes. Then, a distance is derived based on the optimal correspondence. The performance of our method is demonstrated using four standard tests on two well-known shape databases. The results show the superiority of our method over other recent methods in the literature.     

Intrinsic Bayesian Active Contours for Extraction of Object Boundaries in Images

We present a framework for incorporating prior information about high-probability shapes in the process of contour extraction and object recognition in images. Here one studies shapes as elements of an infinite-dimensional, non-linear quotient space, and statistics of shapes are defined and computed intrinsically using differential geometry of this shape space. Prior models on shapes are constructed using probability distributions on tangent bundles of shape spaces. Similar to the past work on active contours, where curves are driven by vector fields based on image gradients and roughness penalties, we incorporate the prior shape knowledge in the form of vector fields on curves. Through experimental results, we demonstrate the use of prior shape models in the estimation of object boundaries, and their success in handling partial obscuration and missing data. Furthermore, we describe the use of this framework in shape-based object recognition or classification.     

Deformation similarity measurement in quasi-conformal shape space

This paper presents a novel approach based on the shape space concept to classify deformations of 3D models. A new quasi-conformal metric is introduced which measures the curvature changes at each vertex of each pose during the deformation. The shapes with similar deformation patterns follow a similar deformation curve in shape space. Energy functional of the deformation curve is minimized to calculate the geodesic curve connecting two shapes on the shape space manifold. The geodesic distance illustrates the similarity between two shapes, which is used to compute the similarity between the deformations. We applied our method to classify the left ventricle deformations of myopathic and control subjects, and the sensitivity and specificity of our method were 88.8% and 85.7%, which are higher than other methods based on the left ventricle cavity, which shows our method can quantify the similarity and disparity of the left ventricle motion well.     

基于简化多边形类正切空间表示的图形渐变算法

采用多边形简化的方法提取出包含源图形主要特征点的多边形.在简化多边形的类正切空间表示下,利用图形对应边在渐变过程中所掠过面积总和最小这一特征构造相似度量函数,由动态规划算法求解实现初始和目标简化多边形之间的顶点对应,再进一步建立源图形顶点之间的整体对应,最后通过插值边和角的方法实现图形渐变.实验结果表明:该算法简单有效,对应效果自然、合理.     

Key-components: detection of salient regions on 3D meshes

In this paper, we present a method to detect stable components on 3D meshes. A component is a salient region on the mesh which contains discriminative local features. Our goal is to represent a 3D mesh with a set of regions, which we called key-components, that characterize the represented object and therefore, they could be used for effective matching and recognition. As key-components are features in coarse scales, they are less sensitive to mesh deformations such as noise. In addition, the number of key-components is low compared to other local representations such as keypoints, allowing us to use them in efficient subsequent tasks. A desirable characteristic of a decomposition is that the components should be repeatable regardless shape transformations. We show in the experiments that the key-components are repeatable and robust under several transformations using the SHREC’2010 feature detection benchmark. In addition, we discover the connection between the theory of saliency of visual parts from the cognitive science and the results obtained with our technique.