Géraldine Morin

A subdivision scheme for surfaces of revolution

This paper describes a simple and efficient non-stationary subdivision scheme of order 4. This curve scheme unifies known subdivision rules for cubic B-splines, splines-in-tension and a certain class of trigonometric splines capable of reproducing circles. The curves generated by this unified subdivision scheme are C^2 splines whose segments are either polynomial, hyperbolic or trigonometric functions, depending on a single tension parameter. This curve scheme easily generalizes to a surface scheme over quadrilateral meshes. The authors hypothesize that this surface scheme produces limit surfaces that are C^2 continuous everywhere except at extraordinary vertices where the surfaces are C^1 continuous. In the particular case where the tension parameters are all set to 1, the scheme reproduces a variant of the Catmull-Clark subdivision scheme. As an application, this scheme is used to generate surfaces of revolution from a given profile curve.

Crowdsourced automatic zoom and scroll for video retargeting

Screen size and display resolution limit the experience of watching videos on mobile devices. The viewing experience can be improved by determining important or interesting regions within the video (called regions of interest, or ROIs) and displaying only the ROIs to the viewer. Previous work focuses on analyzing the video content using visual attention model to infer the ROIs. Such content-based technique, however, has limitations. In this paper, we propose an alternative paradigm to infer ROIs from a video. We crowdsource from a large number of users through their implicit viewing behavior using a zoom and pan interface, and infer the ROIs from their collective wisdom. A retargeted video, consisting of relevant shots determined from historical users behavior, can be automatically generated and replayed to subsequent users who would prefer a less interactive viewing experience. This paper presents how we collect the user traces, infer the ROIs and their dynamics, group the ROIs into shots, and automatically reframe those shots to improve the aesthetics of the video. A user study with 48 participants shows that our automatically retargeted video is of comparable quality to one handcrafted by an expert user

An analytical model for progressive mesh streaming

3D triangular mesh is becoming an increasingly important data type for networked applications such as digital museums, online games, and virtual worlds. In these applications, a multi-resolution representation is typically desired for streaming large 3D meshes, allowing for incremental rendering at the viewers while data is still being transmitted. Such progressive coding, however, introduces dependencies between data. This paper quantitatively analyzes the effects of such dependency on the intermediate decoded mesh quality when the progressive mesh is transmitted over a lossy network, by modeling the distribution of decoding time as a function of mesh properties and network parameters. To illustrate the usefulness of our analytical model, we describe three of its applications. First, we show how it can be used to analytically compute the expected decoded mesh quality. Second, we study two extreme cases of dependency in progressive mesh and show that the effect of dependencies on decoded mesh quality diminishes with time. Finally, based on the model, we propose a packetization strategy that improves the decoded mesh quality during the initial stage of streaming.

Satellite image compression by post-transforms in the wavelet domain

This paper proposes a novel compression scheme with a tunable complexity-rate-distortion trade-off. As images increase in size and resolution, more efficient compression schemes with low complexity are required on-board Earth observation satellites. The standard of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) defines a strip-based compression scheme with the advantages of a low complexity and an easy rate control [CCSDS, Image Data Compression Recommended Standard CCSDS 122.0-B-1 Blue Book, November 2005]. However, future mission specifications expect higher performance in terms of rate-distortion. The scheme proposed in this paper intends to perform better than the CCSDS standard while preserving low complexity and easy rate control. Moreover, to comply with existing on-board devices, the proposed core compression engine still uses the wavelet transform but in association with a linear post-processing inspired from the bandelet transform. The post-transform decomposes a small block of wavelet coefficients on a particular basis. This basis is adaptively selected within a predefined dictionary by rate-distortion optimization. The computational complexity depends upon the dictionary size and of the basis structure. An extremely simple dictionary, reduced to the Hadamard basis, is proposed. The post-transform efficiency is illustrated by experiments on various Earth observation images provided by the French Space Agency (CNES).

Compact and progressive plant models for streaming in networked virtual environments

Just as in the real world, plants are important objects in virtual worlds for creating pleasant and realistic environments, especially those involving natural scenes. As such, much effort has been made in realistic modeling of plants. As the trend moves towards networked and distributed virtual environments, however, the current models are inadequate as they are not designed for progressive transmissions. In this article, we fill in this gap by proposing a progressive representation for plants based on generalized cylinders. We model the shape and thickness of branches in a plant as Bézier curves, group the curves according to the similarity, and differentially code the curves to represent the plant in a compact and progressive manner. To facilitate the transmission of the plants, we quantify the visual contribution of each branch and use this weight in packet scheduling. We show the efficiency of our representations and the effectiveness of our packet scheduler through experiments over a wide area network.

On the smooth convergence of subdivision and degree elevation for Bézier curves

Bezier subdivision and degree elevation algorithms generate piecewise linear approximations of Bezier curves that converge to the original Bezier curve. Discrete derivatives of arbitrary order can be associated with these piecewise linear functions via divided differences. Here we establish the convergence of these discrete derivatives to the corresponding continuous derivatives of the initial Bezier curve. Thus, we show that the control polygons generated by subdivision and degree elevation provide not only an approximation to a Bezier curve, but also approximations of its derivatives of arbitrary order.

Towards peer-assisted rendering in networked virtual environments

This paper introduces a new technique, called peer-assisted rendering, that aims to enable interactive navigation in a 3D networked virtual environment using a resource-constrained device, by speeding up the rendering. A resource-constrained client requests part of the rendered scenes from other peers with similar viewpoints within the virtual environment, and merges the rendered parts into its own view. This approach is more scalable than previous solutions based on server-based pre-rendering. The goal of this paper is to make a strong case for the feasibility of peer-assisted rendering through the following two messages. First, by analyzing a large number of user traces from a popular virtual world called Second Life, we show that there are surprisingly many users with similar viewpoints and encompass large number of common objects in their viewing areas, indicating that a client can potentially find multiple other peers that can assist in rendering. Second, by combining three different rendering methods, each contributing to rendering of different classes of objects in the scene, we show that it is possible for a client to render the scene efficiently with little visual artifacts.

Modeling progressive mesh streaming: Does data dependency matter?

3D triangular meshes are becoming an increasingly prevalent data type in networked applications such as digital museums, online games, and virtual worlds. In these applications, a 3D mesh is typically coded progressively, yielding a multiresolution representation suitable for streaming. While such progressive coding allows incremental rendering for users while data is being transmitted, it introduces dependencies between data, causing delay in rendering when packets are lost. This article quantitatively analyzes the effects of such dependency by modeling the distribution of decoding time as a function of mesh properties and network parameters. We apply our model to study two extreme cases of dependency in progressive meshes and show that the effect of dependencies on decoded mesh quality diminishes with time. Our model provides the expected decoded mesh quality at the receiver at a given time. Based on this expected value, we propose a packetization strategy that improves the decoded mesh quality during the initial stage of streaming. We validate the accuracy of our model under a variety of network conditions, including bursty losses, fluctuating RTT, and varying sending rate. The values predicted from our model match the measured value reasonably well in all cases except when losses are too bursty.

A subdivision scheme for Poisson curves and surfaces

The de Casteljau evaluation algorithm applied to a finite sequence of control points defines a Bezier curve. This evaluation procedure also generates a subdivision algorithm and the limit of the subdivision process is this same Bezier curve. Extending the de Casteljau subdivision algorithm to an infinite sequence of control points defines a new family of curves. Here, limits of this stationary non-uniform subdivision process are shown to be equivalent to curves whose control points are the original data points and whose blending functions are given by the Poisson distribution. Thus this approach generalizes standard subdivision techniques from polynomials to arbitrary analytic functions. Extensions of this new subdivision scheme from curves to tensor product surfaces are also discussed.

Satellite image compression by directional decorrelation of wavelet coefficients

This paper presents a satellite image compression scheme based on a post-processing of the wavelet transform of images. The bandelet transform is a directional post-processing of wavelet coefficients. Thanks to a low computational complexity, this transform is a good candidate for future on-board satellite image compression systems. First, we analyze the ability of the bandelets to exploit directional correlations between wavelet coefficients. This study leads to an improved post-processing with a better decorrelation of adjacent wavelet coefficients in the vertical or in the horizontal direction taking into account the wavelet subband orientations. To perform even better decorrelation, bases are also build by principal component analysis (PCA). This results in an improved compression performance without increasing the computational complexity.