The medial axis transform (MAT) is an important shape representation for shape approximation, shape recognition, and shape retrieval. Despite years of research, there is still a lack of effective methods for efficient, robust and accurate computation of the MAT. We present an efficient method, called {\em Q-MAT}, that uses quadratic error minimization to compute a structurally simple, geometrically accurate, and compact representation of the MAT. We introduce a new error metric for approximation and a new quantitative characterization of unstable branches of the MAT, and integrate them in an extension of the well-known quadric error metric (QEM) framework for mesh decimation. Q-MAT is fast, removes insignificant unstable branches effectively, and produces a simple and accurate piecewise linear approximation of the MAT. The method is thoroughly validated and compared with existing methods for MAT computation.

We present an automatic reconstruction pipeline for large scale urban scenes from aerial images captured by a camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. Using state-of-the-art Structure from Motion and Multi-View Stereo algorithms, we first generate a dense point cloud from the aerial images. Based on the statistical analysis of the footprint grid of the buildings, the point cloud is classified into different categories (i.e., buildings, ground, trees, and others). Roof structures are extracted for each individual building using Markov random field optimization. Then, a contour refinement algorithm based on pivot point detection is utilized to refine the contour of patches. Finally, polygonal mesh models are extracted from the refined contours. Experiments on various scenes as well as comparisons with state-of-the-art reconstruction methods demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

3-D CAD models are an important digital resource in the manufacturing industry. 3-D CAD model retrieval has become a key technology in product lifecycle management enabling the reuse of existing design data. In this paper, we propose a new method to retrieve 3-D CAD models based on 2-D pen-based sketch inputs. Sketching is a common and convenient method for communicating design intent during early stages of product design, e.g., conceptual design. However, converting sketched information into precise 3-D engineering models is cumbersome, and much of this effort can be avoided by reuse of existing data. To achieve this purpose, we present a user-adaptive sketch-based retrieval method in this paper. The contributions of this work are twofold. First, we propose a statistical measure for CAD model retrieval: the measure is based on sketch similarity and accounts for users’ drawing habits. Second, for 3-D CAD models in the database, we propose a sketch generation pipeline that represents each 3-D CAD model by a small yet sufficient set of sketches that are perceptually similar to human drawings. User studies and experiments that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the design process are presented.

This work presents Sketch2Scene, a framework that automatically turns a freehand sketch drawing inferring multiple scene objects to semantically valid, well arranged scenes of 3D models. Unlike the existing works on sketch-based search and composition of 3D models, which typically process individual sketched objects one by one, our technique performs co-retrieval and co-placement of 3D relevant models by jointly processing the sketched objects. This is enabled by summarizing functional and spatial relationships among models in a large collection of 3D scenes as structural groups. Our technique greatly reduces the amount of user intervention needed for sketch-based modeling of 3D scenes and fits well into the traditional production pipeline involving concept design followed by 3D modeling. A pilot study indicates that the 3D scenes automatically synthesized by our technique in seconds are comparable to those manually created by an artist in hours in terms of visual aesthetics.

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