Progressive coding of 3D textured graphic model via joint mesh-texture optimization

Progressive coding of 3D textured graphic models using a joint mesh-texture optimization technique is investigated in this work. The mesh and texture data of a model are first fed into their respective compression modules to result in a series of levels of details. Then, for a given viewpoint, a rate-distortion surface is generated using these mesh and texture data. Afterwards, an optimal path over the rate-distortion surface is determined by the steepest descent algorithm. To achieve progressive transmission, the mesh and texture are transmitted in a certain ratio along the optimal path to provide the best visual quality for the given viewpoint. For further generalization, a layered sampling algorithm is proposed to deal with an arbitrary viewing angle. The performance of the proposed joint mesh-texture progressive coding algorithm is demonstrated by experimental results.