With the increasing popularization of the Internet, together with the rapid
development of 3D scanning technologies and modeling tools, 3D model
databases have become more and more common in fields such as biology,
chemistry, archaeology and geography. People can distribute their own 3D works
over the Internet, search and download 3D model data, and also carry out
electronic trade over the Internet. However, some serious issues are related to this
as follows: (1) How to efficiently transmit and store huge 3D model data with
limited bandwidth and storage capacity; (2) How to prevent 3D works from being
pirated and tampered with; (3) How to search for the desired 3D models in huge
multimedia databases. This book is devoted to partially solving the above issues.
Compression is useful because it helps reduce the consumption of expensive
resources, such as hard disk space and transmission bandwidth. On the downside,
compressed data must be decompressed to be used, and this extra processing may
be detrimental to some applications. 3D polygonal mesh (with geometry, color,
normal vector and texture coordinate information), as a common surface
representation, is now heavily used in various multimedia applications such as
computer games, animations and simulation applications. To maintain a
convincing level of realism, many applications require highly detailed mesh
models. However, such complex models demand broad network bandwidth and
much storage capacity to transmit and store. To address these problems, 3D mesh
compression is essential for reducing the size of 3D model representation.
"Three-Dimensional Model Analysis and Processing" focuses on five hot research directions in 3D model analysis and processing in computer science, i.e., on compression, feature extraction, content-based retrieval, irreversible watermarking and reversible watermarking. The book is based on a wide range of new content, systematic and theoretical, and fully reflects the state-of-the-art in 3D model analysis and processing technologies. This book is intended for researchers, engineers and graduate students working in 3D model analysis and processing. Faxin Yu is an Associate Professor at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, China; both Zheming Lu and Pinghui Wang are also Professors there; Hao Luo is a Lecturer there.