Patent Application
20230401755
This disclosure relates generally to compression and decompression of three-dimensional meshes with associated textures or attributes.
Various types of sensors, such as light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems, 3-D-cameras, 3-D scanners, etc. may capture data indicating positions of points in three-dimensional space, for example positions in the X, Y, and Z planes. Also, such systems may further capture attribute information in addition to spatial information for the respective points, such as color information (e.g., RGB values), texture information, intensity attributes, reflectivity attributes, motion related attributes, modality attributes, or various other attributes. In some circumstances, additional attributes may be assigned to the respective points, such as a time-stamp when the point was captured. Points captured by such sensors may make up a “point cloud” comprising a set of points each having associated spatial information and one or more associated attributes. In some circumstances, a point cloud may include thousands of points, hundreds of thousands of points, millions of points, or even more points. Also, in some circumstances, point clouds may be generated, for example in software, as opposed to being captured by one or more sensors. In either case, such point clouds may include large amounts of data and may be costly and time-consuming to store and transmit. Also, three-dimensional visual content may also be captured in other ways, such as via 2D images of a scene captured from multiple viewing positions relative to the scene.
Such three-dimensional visual content may be represented by a three-dimensional mesh comprising a plurality of polygons with connected vertices that models a surface of three-dimensional visual content, such as a surface of a point cloud. Moreover, texture or attribute values of points of the three-dimensional visual content may be overlaid on the mesh to represent the attribute or texture of the three-dimensional visual content when modelled as a three-dimensional mesh.
Additionally, a three-dimensional mesh may be generated, for example in software, without first being modelled as a point cloud or other type of three-dimensional visual content. For example, the software may directly generate the three-dimensional mesh and apply texture or attribute values to represent an object.
In some embodiments, a system includes one or more sensors configured to capture points representing an object in a view of the sensor and to capture texture or attribute values associated with the points of the object. The system also includes one or more computing devices storing program instructions, that when executed, cause the one or more computing devices to generate a three-dimensional mesh that models the points of the object using vertices and connections between the vertices that define polygons of the three-dimensional mesh. Also, in some embodiments, a three-dimensional mesh may be generated without first being captured by one or more sensors. For example, a computer graphics program may directly generate a three-dimensional mesh with an associated texture or associated attribute values to represent an object in a scene, without necessarily generating a point cloud or other type of three-dimensional visual content that represents the object.
In some embodiments, an encoder system includes one or more computing devices storing program instructions that when executed by the one or more computing devices, further cause the one or more computing devices to determine a plurality of patches for the attributes of three-dimensional mesh and a corresponding attribute map that maps the attribute patches to the geometry of the mesh.
The encoder system may further encode the geometry of the mesh by encoding a base mesh and displacements of vertices relative to the base mesh. A compressed bit stream may include a compressed base mesh, compressed displacement values, and compressed attribute information. In order to improve compression efficiency, coding units may be used to encode portions of the mesh. For example, encoding units may comprise tiles of the mesh, wherein each tile comprises independently encoded segments of the mesh. As another example, a coding unit may include a patch made up of several sub-meshes of the mesh, wherein the sub-meshes exploit dependencies between the sub-meshes and are therefore not independently encoded. Also, higher level coding units, such as patch groups may be used. Different encoding parameters may be defined in the bit stream to apply to different coding units. For example, instead of having to repeatedly signal the encoding parameters, a commonly signaled coding parameter may be applied to members of a given coding unit, such as sub-meshes of a patch, or a mesh portion that makes up a tile. Some example encoding parameters that may be used include: entropy coding parameters, intra-frame prediction parameters, inter-frame prediction parameters, local or sub-mesh indices, amongst various others.
In order to avoid generating artefacts, such as cracks, in a reconstructed version of the mesh, reconstructed from the encoded coding units, encoding parameters may be adjusted at boundaries of coding units. For example, a sub-division routine used to sub-divide edges of a sub-mesh may be adapted such that sub-divisions that cause a mis-match between vertices of adjacent coding units (e.g., patches) are avoided. For example, edges that are not shared by another patch may be further sub-divided to a greater degree (more subdivision iterations performed), but for edges that are shared by an adjacent coding unit, the degree to which the edge is subdivided may be limited to the least subdivided one of the two adjacent coding units. In this way “T” junctions are avoided. Thus, respective vertices in one coding unit will align with corresponding respective vertices in the adjacent coding unit. As another example, wavelet coefficient quantization of vertices shared by adjacent coding units may be limited such that the quantization is limited to use the quantization parameters of the coding unit that has the most lossless quantization parameters of the adjacent coding units.
This specification includes references to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment.” The appearances of the phrases “in one embodiment” or “in an embodiment” do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment. Particular features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner consistent with this disclosure.
“Comprising.” This term is open-ended. As used in the appended claims, this term does not foreclose additional structure or steps. Consider a claim that recites: “An apparatus comprising one or more processor units . . . .” Such a claim does not foreclose the apparatus from including additional components (e.g., a network interface unit, graphics circuitry, etc.).
“Configured To.” Various units, circuits, or other components may be described or claimed as “configured to” perform a task or tasks. In such contexts, “configured to” is used to connote structure by indicating that the units/circuits/components include structure (e.g., circuitry) that performs those task or tasks during operation. As such, the unit/circuit/component can be said to be configured to perform the task even when the specified unit/circuit/component is not currently operational (e.g., is not on). The units/circuits/components used with the “configured to” language include hardware—for example, circuits, memory storing program instructions executable to implement the operation, etc. Reciting that a unit/circuit/component is “configured to” perform one or more tasks is expressly intended not to invoke 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), for that unit/circuit/component. Additionally, “configured to” can include generic structure (e.g., generic circuitry) that is manipulated by software and/or firmware (e.g., an FPGA or a general-purpose processor executing software) to operate in manner that is capable of performing the task(s) at issue. “Configure to” may also include adapting a manufacturing process (e.g., a semiconductor fabrication facility) to fabricate devices (e.g., integrated circuits) that are adapted to implement or perform one or more tasks.
“First,” “Second,” etc. As used herein, these terms are used as labels for nouns that they precede, and do not imply any type of ordering (e.g., spatial, temporal, logical, etc.). For example, a buffer circuit may be described herein as performing write operations for “first” and “second” values. The terms “first” and “second” do not necessarily imply that the first value must be written before the second value.
“Based On.” As used herein, this term is used to describe one or more factors that affect a determination. This term does not foreclose additional factors that may affect a determination. That is, a determination may be solely based on those factors or based, at least in part, on those factors. Consider the phrase “determine A based on B.” While in this case, B is a factor that affects the determination of A, such a phrase does not foreclose the determination of A from also being based on C. In other instances, A may be determined based solely on B.
As data acquisition and display technologies have become more advanced, the ability to capture volumetric content comprising thousands or millions of points in 2-D or 3-D space, such as via LIDAR systems, has increased. Also, the development of advanced display technologies, such as virtual reality or augmented reality systems, has increased potential uses for volumetric content. However, volumetric content files are often very large and may be costly and time-consuming to store and transmit. For example, communication of volumetric content over private or public networks, such as the Internet, may require considerable amounts of time and/or network resources, such that some uses of volumetric content, such as real-time uses, may be limited. Also, storage requirements of volumetric content files may consume a significant amount of storage capacity of devices storing the volumetric content files, which may also limit potential applications for using volumetric content data.
In some embodiments, an encoder may be used to generate compressed volumetric content to reduce costs and time associated with storing and transmitting large volumetric content files. In some embodiments, a system may include an encoder that compresses attribute and/or spatial information of volumetric content such that the volumetric content file may be stored and transmitted more quickly than non-compressed volumetric content and in a manner that the volumetric content file may occupy less storage space than non-compressed volumetric content.
In some embodiments, such encoders and decoders (or other encoders and decoders) described herein may be adapted to additionally or alternatively encode three-degree of freedom plus (3DOF+) scenes, visual volumetric content, such as MPEG V3C scenes, immersive video scenes, such as MPEG MIV, etc.
In some embodiments, a static or dynamic mesh that is to be compressed and/or encoded may include a set of 3D Meshes M(0), M(1), M(2), . . . , M(n). Each mesh M(i) may be defined by be a connectivity information C(i), a geometry information G(i), texture coordinates T(i) and texture connectivity TC(i). For each mesh M(i), one or multiple 2D images A(i, 0), A(i, 1) . . . , A(i, D−1) describing the textures or attributes associated with the mesh may be included. For example,
For example, the example texture mesh stored in the object format shown in
In some embodiments, the geometry information G(i) may represent locations of vertices of the mesh in 3D space and the connectivity C(i) may indicate how the vertices are to be connected together to form polygons that make up the mesh M(i). Also, the texture coordinates T(i) may indicate locations of pixels in a 2D image that correspond to vertices of a corresponding sub-mesh. Attribute patch information may indicate how the texture coordinates defined with respect to a 2D bounding box map into a three-dimensional space of a 3D bounding box associated with the attribute patch based on how the points were projected onto a projection plane for the attribute patch. Also, the texture connectivity information TC(i) may indicate how the vertices represented by the texture coordinates T(i) are to be connected together to form polygons of the sub-meshes. For example, each texture or attribute patch of the texture image A(i) may correspond to a corresponding sub-mesh defined using texture coordinates T(i) and texture connectivity TC(i).
In some embodiments, a mesh encoder may perform a patch generation process, wherein the mesh is subdivided into a set of sub-meshes. The sub-meshes may correspond to the connected components of the texture connectivity or may be different sub-meshes than the texture connectivity of the mesh. In some embodiments, a number and a size of sub-meshes to be determined may be adjusted to balance discontinuities and flexibility to update the mesh, such as via inter-prediction. For example, smaller sub-meshes may allow for a finer granularity of updates to change a particular region of a mesh, such as at a subsequent moment in time using an inter-prediction process. But, a higher number of sub-meshes may introduce more discontinuities.
A mesh that could be either static or dynamic is received at pre-processing 302. Also, an attribute map representing how attribute images (e.g., texture images) for the static/dynamic mesh are to be mapped to the mesh is received at pre-processing module 302. For example, the attribute map may include texture coordinates and texture connectivity for texture images for the mesh. The pre-processing module 302 separates the static/dynamic mesh M(i) into a base mesh m(i) and displacements d(i). Where the displacements represent how vertices are to be displaced to re-created the original static/dynamic mesh from the base mesh. For example, in some embodiments, vertices included in the original static/dynamic mesh may be omitted from the base mesh (e.g., the base mesh may be a compressed version of the original static/dynamic mesh). As will be discussed in more detail below, a decoder may predict additional vertices to be added to the base mesh, for example by sub-dividing edges between remaining vertices included in the base mesh. In such an example, the displacements may indicate how the additional vertices are to be displaced, wherein the displacement of the added vertices modifies the base mesh to better represent the original static/dynamic mesh. For example,
The separated base mesh m(i) and displacements d(i) that have been separated by pre-processing module 302 are provided to encoder 304, which may be an intra-frame encoder as shown in
With regard to mesh decimation, in some embodiments, a portion of a surface of a static/dynamic mesh may be thought of as an input 2D curve (represented by a 2D polyline), referred to as an “original” curve. The original curve may be first down-sampled to generate a base curve/polyline, referred to as a “decimated” curve. A subdivision scheme, such as those described herein, may then be applied to the decimated polyline to generate a “subdivided” curve. For instance, a subdivision scheme using an iterative interpolation scheme may be applied. The subdivision scheme may include inserting at each iteration a new point in the middle of each edge of the polyline. The inserted points represent additional vertices that may be moved by the displacements.
For example, the subdivided polyline is then deformed to get a better approximation of the original curve. More precisely, a displacement vector is computed for each vertex of the subdivided mesh such that the shape of the displaced curve approximates the shape of the original curve. An advantage of the subdivided curve is that it has a subdivision structure that allows efficient compression, while it offers a faithful approximation of the original curve. The compression efficiency is obtained thanks to the following properties:
For example,
In some embodiments, intra-frame encoder 402 receives base mesh m(i), displacements d(i), the original static/dynamic mesh M(i) and attribute map A(i). The base mesh m(i) is provided to quantization module 404, wherein aspects of the base mesh may (optionally) be further quantized. In some embodiments, various mesh encoders may be used to encode the base mesh. Also, in some embodiments, intra-frame encoder 402 may allow for customization, wherein different respective mesh encoding schemes may be used to encode the base mesh. For example, static mesh encoder 406 may be a selected mesh encoder selected from a set of viable mesh encoder, such as a DRACO encoder (or another suitable encoder). The encoded base mesh, that has been encoded by static mesh encoder 406 is provided to multiplexer (MUX) 438 for inclusion in the compressed bitstream b(i). Additionally, the encoded base mesh is provided to static mesh decoder in order to generate a reconstructed version of the base mesh (that a decoder will see). This reconstructed version of the base mesh is used to update the displacements d(i) to take into account any geometric distortion between the original base mesh and a reconstructed version of the base mesh (that a decoder will see). For example, static mesh decoder 408 generates reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i) and provides the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i) to displacement update module 410, which also receives the original base mesh and the original displacement d(i). The displacement update module 410 compares the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i) (that the decoder will see) to the base mesh m(i) and adjusts the displacements d(i) to account for differences between the base mesh m(i) and the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i). These updated displacements d′(i) are provided to wavelet transform 412 which applies a wavelet transformation to further compress the updated displacements d′(i) and outputs wavelet coefficients e(i), which are provided to quantization module 414 which generated quantized wavelet coefficients e′(i). The quantized wavelet coefficients may then be packed into a 2D image frame via image packing module 416, wherein the packed 2D image frame is further video encoded via video encoding 418. The encoded video images are also provided to multiplexer (MUX) 438 for inclusion in the compressed bit stream b(i).
In addition, in order to account for any geometric distortion introduced relative to the original static/dynamic mesh, an attribute transfer process 430 may be used to modify attributes to account for differences between a reconstructed deformed mesh DM(i) and the original static/dynamic mesh.
For example, video encoding 418 may further perform video decoding (or a complimentary video-decoding module may be used (which is not shown in
Attribute transfer module 430 compares the geometry of the original static/dynamic mesh M(i) to the reconstructed deformed mesh DM(i) and updates the attribute map to account for any geometric deformations, this updated attribute map is output as updated attribute map A′(i). The updated attribute map A′(i) is then padded, wherein a 2D image comprising the attribute images is padded such that spaces not used to communicate the attribute images have a padding applied. In some embodiments, a color space conversion is optionally applied at color space conversion module 434. For example, an RGB color space used to represent color values of the attribute images may be converted to a YCbCr color space, also color space sub-sampling may be applied such as 4:2:0, 4:0:0, etc. color space sub-sampling. The updated attribute map A′(i) that has been padded and optionally color space converted is then video encoded via video encoding module 436 and is provided to multiplexer 438 for inclusion in compressed bitstream b(i).
In some embodiments, a controller 400 may coordinate the various quantization and inverse quantization steps as well as the video encoding and decoding steps such that the inverse quantization “undoes” the quantization and such that the video decoding “undoes” the video encoding. Also, the attribute transfer module 430 may take into account the level of quantization being applied based on communications from the controller 400.
Intra frame decoder 502 receives a compressed bitstream b(i), such as the compressed bit stream generated by the intra frame encoder 402 shown in
Also, the displacement sub-component of the bit stream is provided to video decoding 508, wherein video encoded image frames are video decoded and provided to image unpacking 510. Image unpacking 510 extracts the packed displacements from the video decoded image frame and provides them to inverse quantization 512 wherein the displacements are inverse quantized. Also, the inverse quantized displacements are provided to inverse wavelet transform 514, which outputs decoded displacements d″(i). Reconstructed deformed mesh generator 520 applies the decoded displacements d″(i) to the decoded base mesh m″(i) to generate a decoded static/dynamic mesh M″(i). Also, the attribute map sub-component is provided to video decoding 516, which outputs a decoded attribute map A″(i). A reconstructed version of the three-dimensional visual content can then be rendered at a device associated with the decoder using the decoded mesh M″(i) and the decoded attribute map A″(i).
As shown in
The mesh sub-stream is fed to the mesh decoder to generate the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i). The decoded base mesh m″(i) is then obtained by applying inverse quantization to m′(i). The proposed scheme is agnostic of which mesh codec is used. The mesh codec used could be specified explicitly in the bitstream or could be implicitly defined/fixed by the specification or the application.
The displacement sub-stream could be decoded by a video/image decoder. The generated image/video is then un-packed and inverse quantization is applied to the wavelet coefficients. In an alternative embodiment, the displacements could be decoded by dedicated displacement data decoder. The proposed scheme is agnostic of which codec/standard is used. Image/video codecs such as [HEVC][AVC][AV1][AV2][JPEG][JPEG2000] could be used. The motion decoder used for decoding mesh motion information or a dictionary-based decoder such as ZIP could be for example used as the dedicated displacement data decoder. The decoded displacement d″(i) is then generated by applying the inverse wavelet transform to the unquantized wavelet coefficients. The final decoded mesh is generated by applying the reconstruction process to the decoded base mesh m″(i) and adding the decoded displacement field d″(i).
The attribute sub-stream is directly decoded by the video decoder and the decoded attribute map A″(i) is generated as output. The proposed scheme is agnostic of which codec/standard is used. Image/video codecs such as [HEVC][AVC][AV1][AV2][JPEG][JPEG2000] could be used. Alternatively, an attribute sub-stream could be decoded by using non-image/video decoders (e.g., using a dictionary-based decoder such as ZIP). Multiple sub-streams, each associated with a different attribute map, could be decoded. Each sub-stream could use a different codec.
In some embodiments, inter frame encoder 602 may include similar components as the intra-frame encoder 402, but instead of encoding a base mesh, the inter-frame encoder may encode motion vectors that can be applied to a reference mesh to generate, at a decoder, a base mesh.
For example, in the case of dynamic meshes, a temporally consistent re-meshing process is used, which may produce a same subdivision structure that is shared by the current mesh M′(i) and a reference mesh M′(j). Such a coherent temporal re-meshing process makes it possible to skip the encoding of the base mesh m(i) and re-use the base mesh m(j) associated with the reference frame M(j). This could also enable better temporal prediction for both the attribute and geometry information. More precisely, a motion field f(i) describing how to move the vertices of m(j) to match the positions of m(i) may be computed and encoded. Such process is described in
In some embodiments, the base mesh m(i) associated with the current frame is first quantized (e.g., using uniform quantization) and encoded by using a static mesh encoder. The proposed scheme is agnostic of which mesh codec is used. The mesh codec used could be specified explicitly in the bitstream by encoding a mesh codec ID or could be implicitly defined/fixed by the specification or the application.
Depending on the application and the targeted bitrate/visual quality, the encoder could optionally encode a set of displacement vectors associated with the subdivided mesh vertices, referred to as the displacement field d(i).
The reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i) (e.g., output of reconstruction of base mesh 408) is then used to update the displacement field d(i) (at update displacements module 410) to generate an updated displacement field d′(i) so it takes into account the differences between the reconstructed base mesh m′(i) and the original base mesh m(i). By exploiting the subdivision surface mesh structure, a wavelet transform is then applied, at wavelet transform 412, to d′(i) and a set of wavelet coefficients are generated. The wavelet coefficients are then quantized, at quantization 414, packed into a 2D image/video (at image packing 416), and compressed by using an image/video encoder (at video encoding 418). The encoding of the wavelet coefficients may be lossless or lossy. The reconstructed version of the wavelet coefficients is obtained by applying image unpacking and inverse quantization to the reconstructed wavelet coefficients video generated during the video encoding process (e.g., at 420, 422, and 424). Reconstructed displacements d″(i) are then computed by applying the inverse wavelet transform to the reconstructed wavelet coefficients. A reconstructed base mesh m″(i) is obtained by applying inverse quantization to the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i). The reconstructed deformed mesh DM(i) is obtained by subdividing m″(i) and applying the reconstructed displacements d″(i) to its vertices.
Since the quantization step or/and the mesh compression module may be lossy, a reconstructed quantized version of m(i), denoted as m′(i), is computed. If the mesh information is losslessly encoded and the quantization step is skipped, m(i) would exactly match m′(i).
As shown in
The motion field f(i) is computed by considering the quantized version of m(i) and the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(j). Since m′(j) may have a different number of vertices than m(j) (e.g., vertices may get merged/removed), the encoder keeps track of the transformation applied to m(j) to get m′(j) and applies it to m(i) to guarantee a 1-to-1 correspondence between m′(j) and the transformed and quantized version of m(i), denoted m*(i). The motion field f(i) is computed by subtracting the quantized positions p(i, v) of the vertex v of m*(i) from the positions p(j, v) of the vertex v of m′(j):
f(i,v)=p(i,v)−p(j,v)
The motion field is then further predicted by using the connectivity information of m′(j) and is entropy encoded (e.g., context adaptive binary arithmetic encoding could be used).
Since the motion field compression process could be lossy, a reconstructed motion field denoted as f (i) is computed by applying the motion decoder module 408. A reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i) is then computed by adding the motion field to the positions of m′(j). The remaining of the encoding process is similar to the Intra frame encoding.
Inter frame decoder 702 includes similar components as intra frame decoder 502 shown in
In a similar manner to the intra-frame decoder, the inter-frame decoder 702 separates the bitstream into three separate sub-streams:
The motion sub-stream is decoded by applying the motion decoder 704. The proposed scheme is agnostic of which codec/standard is used to decode the motion information. For instance, any motion decoding scheme could be used. The decoded motion is then optionally added to the decoded reference quantized base mesh m′(j) to generate the reconstructed quantized base mesh m′(i), i.e., the already decoded mesh at instance j can be used for the prediction of the mesh at instance i. Afterwards, the decoded base mesh m″(i) is generated by applying the inverse quantization to m′(i).
The displacement and attribute sub-streams are decoded in a similar manner as in the intra frame decoding process described with regard to
The inverse quantization and reconstruction processes are not normative and could be implemented in various ways and/or combined with the rendering process.
In some embodiments, the mesh may be sub-divided into a set of patches (e.g., sub-parts) and the patches may potentially be grouped into groups of patches, such as a set of patch groups/tiles. In such embodiments, different encoding parameters (e.g., subdivision, quantization, wavelets transform, coordinates system . . . ) may be used to compress each patch or patch group. In some embodiments, in order to avoid cracks at patch boundaries, lossless coding may be used for boundary vertices. Also, quantization of wavelet coefficients for boundary vertices may be disabled, along with using a local coordinate system for boundary vertices.
In some embodiments, scalability may be supported at different levels. For example, temporal scalability may be achieved through temporal sub-sampling and frame re-ordering. Also, quality and spatial scalability may be achieved by using different mechanisms for the geometry/vertex attribute data and the attribute map data. Also, region of interest (ROI) reconstruction may be supported. For example, the encoding process described in the previous sections could be configured to encode an ROI with higher resolution and/or higher quality for geometry, vertex attribute, and/or attribute map data. This is particularly useful to provide a higher visual quality content under tight bandwidth and complexity constraints (e.g., higher quality for the face vs rest of the body). Priority/importance/spatial/bounding box information could be associated with patches, patch groups, tiles, network abstraction layer (NAL) units, and/or sub-bitstreams in a manner that allows the decoder to adaptively decode a subset of the mesh based on the viewing frustum, the power budget, or the terminal capabilities. Note that any combination of such coding units could be used together to achieve such functionality. For instance, NAL units and sub-bitstreams could be used together.
In some embodiments, temporal and/or spatial random access may be supported. Temporal random access could be achieved by introducing IRAPs (Intra Random Access Points) in the different sub-streams (e.g., attribute atlas, video, mesh, motion, and displacement sub-streams). Spatial random access could be supported through the definition and usage of tiles, sub-pictures, patch groups, and/or patches or any combination of these coding units. Metadata describing the layout and relationships between the different units could also need to be generated and included in the bitstream to assist the decoder in determining the units that need to be decoded.
As discussed above, various functionalities may be supported, such as:
The disclosed compression schemes allow the various coding units (e.g., patches, patch groups and tiles) to be compressed with different encoding parameters (e.g., subdivision scheme, subdivision iteration count, quantization parameters, etc.), which can introduce compression artefacts (e.g., cracks between patch boundaries). In some embodiments, as further discussed below an efficient (e.g., computational complexity, compression efficiency, power consumption, etc. efficient) strategy may be used that allows the scheme to handle different coding unit parameters without introducing artefacts.
A mesh could be segmented into a set of tiles (e.g., parts/segments), which could be encoded and decoded independently. Vertices/edges that are shared by more than one tile are duplicated as illustrated in
Each tile could be further segmented into a set of sub-meshes, which may be encoded while exploiting dependencies between them. For example,
The sub-mesh structure could be defined either by:
A Patch is a set of sub-meshes. An encoder may explicitly store for each patch the indices of the sub-meshes that belongs to it. In a particular embodiment, a sub-mesh could belong to one or multiple patches (e.g., associate metadata with overlapping parts of the mesh). In another embodiment, a sub-mesh may belong to only a single patch. Vertices located on the boundary between patches are not duplicated. Patches are also encoded while exploiting correlations between them and therefore, they cannot be encoded/decoded independently.
The list of sub-meshes associated with a patch may be encoded by using various strategies, such as:
A patch group is a set of patches. A patch group is particularly useful to store parameters shared by its patches or to allow a unique handle that could be used to associate metadata with those patches.
In some embodiments, in order to support using different encoding parameters per patch, the following may be used:
For example,
When applying quantization to the wavelet coefficients, the quantization parameters used for a vertex are selected based on the quantization parameters of all the patches the vertex belongs to. For example, suppose that a patch belongs to two patches, Patch0 and Patch1. Patch0 has a quantization parameter QP1. Patch1 has a quantization parameter QP2. The wavelet coefficients associated with the vertex will be quantized using the quantization parameter QP=min(QP1, QP2).
To support mesh tiles, the encoder could partition the mesh into a set of tiles, which are then encoded/decoded independently by applying any mesh codec or use a mesh codec that natively supports tiled mesh coding.
In both cases, the set of shared vertices located on tile boundaries are duplicated. To avoid cracks appearing between tiles, the encoder could either:
In another embodiment, the encoder could duplicate regions of the mesh and store them in multiple tiles. This could be done for the purpose of:
Various embodiments of a point cloud encoder or decoder, as described herein may be executed in one or more computer systems 1200, which may interact with various other devices. Note that any component, action, or functionality described above with respect to
In various embodiments, computer system 1200 may be a uniprocessor system including one processor 1210, or a multiprocessor system including several processors 1210 (e.g., two, four, eight, or another suitable number). Processors 1210 may be any suitable processor capable of executing instructions. For example, in various embodiments processors 1210 may be general-purpose or embedded processors implementing any of a variety of instruction set architectures (ISAs), such as the x86, PowerPC, SPARC, or MIPS ISAs, or any other suitable ISA. In multiprocessor systems, each of processors 1210 may commonly, but not necessarily, implement the same ISA.
System memory 1220 may be configured to store point cloud compression or point cloud decompression program instructions 1222 and/or sensor data accessible by processor 1210. In various embodiments, system memory 1220 may be implemented using any suitable memory technology, such as static random-access memory (SRAM), synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), nonvolatile/Flash-type memory, or any other type of memory. In the illustrated embodiment, program instructions 1222 may be configured to implement an image sensor control application incorporating any of the functionality described above. In some embodiments, program instructions and/or data may be received, sent or stored upon different types of computer-accessible media or on similar media separate from system memory 1220 or computer system 1200. While computer system 1200 is described as implementing the functionality of functional blocks of previous Figures, any of the functionality described herein may be implemented via such a computer system.
In one embodiment, I/O interface 1230 may be configured to coordinate I/O traffic between processor 1210, system memory 1220, and any peripheral devices in the device, including network interface 1240 or other peripheral interfaces, such as input/output devices 1250. In some embodiments, I/O interface 1230 may perform any necessary protocol, timing or other data transformations to convert data signals from one component (e.g., system memory 1220) into a format suitable for use by another component (e.g., processor 1210). In some embodiments, I/O interface 1230 may include support for devices attached through various types of peripheral buses, such as a variant of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus standard or the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard, for example. In some embodiments, the function of I/O interface 1230 may be split into two or more separate components, such as a north bridge and a south bridge, for example. Also, in some embodiments some or all of the functionality of I/O interface 1230, such as an interface to system memory 1220, may be incorporated directly into processor 1210.
Network interface 1240 may be configured to allow data to be exchanged between computer system 1200 and other devices attached to a network 1285 (e.g., carrier or agent devices) or between nodes of computer system 1200. Network 1285 may in various embodiments include one or more networks including but not limited to Local Area Networks (LANs) (e.g., an Ethernet or corporate network), Wide Area Networks (WANs) (e.g., the Internet), wireless data networks, some other electronic data network, or some combination thereof. In various embodiments, network interface 1240 may support communication via wired or wireless general data networks, such as any suitable type of Ethernet network, for example; via telecommunications/telephony networks such as analog voice networks or digital fiber communications networks; via storage area networks such as Fibre Channel SANs, or via any other suitable type of network and/or protocol.
Input/output devices 1250 may, in some embodiments, include one or more display terminals, keyboards, keypads, touchpads, scanning devices, voice or optical recognition devices, or any other devices suitable for entering or accessing data by one or more computer systems 1200. Multiple input/output devices 1250 may be present in computer system 1200 or may be distributed on various nodes of computer system 1200. In some embodiments, similar input/output devices may be separate from computer system 1200 and may interact with one or more nodes of computer system 1200 through a wired or wireless connection, such as over network interface 1240.
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Those skilled in the art will appreciate that computer system 1200 is merely illustrative and is not intended to limit the scope of embodiments. In particular, the computer system and devices may include any combination of hardware or software that can perform the indicated functions, including computers, network devices, Internet appliances, PDAs, wireless phones, pagers, etc. Computer system 1200 may also be connected to other devices that are not illustrated, or instead may operate as a stand-alone system. In addition, the functionality provided by the illustrated components may in some embodiments be combined in fewer components or distributed in additional components. Similarly, in some embodiments, the functionality of some of the illustrated components may not be provided and/or other additional functionality may be available.
Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that, while various items are illustrated as being stored in memory or on storage while being used, these items or portions of them may be transferred between memory and other storage devices for purposes of memory management and data integrity. Alternatively, in other embodiments some or all of the software components may execute in memory on another device and communicate with the illustrated computer system via inter-computer communication. Some or all of the system components or data structures may also be stored (e.g., as instructions or structured data) on a computer-accessible medium or a portable article to be read by an appropriate drive, various examples of which are described above. In some embodiments, instructions stored on a computer-accessible medium separate from computer system 1200 may be transmitted to computer system 1200 via transmission media or signals such as electrical, electromagnetic, or digital signals, conveyed via a communication medium such as a network and/or a wireless link. Various embodiments may further include receiving, sending or storing instructions and/or data implemented in accordance with the foregoing description upon a computer-accessible medium. Generally speaking, a computer-accessible medium may include a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium or memory medium such as magnetic or optical media, e.g., disk or DVD/CD-ROM, volatile or non-volatile media such as RAM (e.g., SDRAM, DDR, RDRAM, SRAM, etc.), ROM, etc. In some embodiments, a computer-accessible medium may include transmission media or signals such as electrical, electromagnetic, or digital signals, conveyed via a communication medium such as network and/or a wireless link.
The methods described herein may be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination thereof, in different embodiments. In addition, the order of the blocks of the methods may be changed, and various elements may be added, reordered, combined, omitted, modified, etc. Various modifications and changes may be made as would be obvious to a person skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure. The various embodiments described herein are meant to be illustrative and not limiting. Many variations, modifications, additions, and improvements are possible. Accordingly, plural instances may be provided for components described herein as a single instance. Boundaries between various components, operations and data stores are somewhat arbitrary, and particular operations are illustrated in the context of specific illustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality are envisioned and may fall within the scope of claims that follow. Finally, structures and functionality presented as discrete components in the example configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or component. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements may fall within the scope of embodiments as defined in the claims that follow.
This application claims benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 63/333,081, entitled “Mesh Compression Using Coding Units with Different Encoding Parameters,” filed Apr. 20, 2022, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63333081 | Apr 2022 | US |
