Presenter

Leon Denis - ETRO-VUB

Abstract

Computer graphics have evolved much since the early beginning of the digital era. In the last decades, we have witnessed a giant leap in graphical applications from the classic Pong game of forty years ago towards the realistic simulations and computer games of today. The same trend is visible in the area of realistic non-real-time rendering where ray-tracing and global illumination algorithms have improved up to a point where distinction between reality and synthetic virtual imagery is only visible to those with the keenest eyes. With technology rapidly evolving and applications becoming increasingly realistic, the demand for accurate high-resolution data grows as well. Combined with the advent of computer-aided design and high-resolution laser scanners, recent developments gave rise to meshes with an astonishingly high amount of detail. Though such high-resolution meshes enable very realistic renderings, they also bring forth new problems the most straightforward being the large amount of memory necessary in order to store or transmit them.

This dissertation proposes numerous novel concepts in the field of scalable encoding of semi-regular and irregular triangular meshes. In this context, we propose novel coding systems and present a new multiresolution analysis that generates intermediate meshes of high visual quality, making them also suitable in the context of level-of-detail. The numerous experimental assessments presented in this dissertation indicate that the proposed techniques offer competitive performance compared to the prior arts.