A spatial hierarchical compression method for 3D streaming animation

Abstract

When distributing 3D contents real-time over a network with a narrow bandwidth such as a telephone line, methods for streaming and data compression can be considered indispensable.In previous work, we made possible the real-time streaming of 3D animation data on a network with a narrow bandwidth such as a telephone line by partitioning motion data for humanoid characters (data obtained by motion capture, for example full frame data at 30 frames/sec) into packets and then carrying out compression by culling data along the time axis.However, as a 3D scene becomes more complex, the number of humanoid characters also increases. Accordingly, the transmission rate also increases, becoming greater than the available bandwidth and making real-time distribution impossible.In this paper, we concentrate on the problem of real-time distribution, describing a new data packet format which allows flexible scalability of the transmission rate, and a data compression method, SHCM, which maximizes the features of this format using a 3D scene structure.Because compression using a 3D scene structure aims to obtain the optimal overall compression rate by altering the compression rate for each object, based on information on the position in 3D space relative to the behavior (motion) data of each object, its application to MPEG4 can be expected.Using this method the real-time distribution of 3D contents becomes possible despite the bandwidth restrictions of an ordinary telephone line.

Model-Based Power Aware Compression Algorithms for MPEG-4 Virtual Human Animation in Mobile Environments

“…Endo et al [12] propose quantization of the motion type, rather than the motion data itself. Hijiri et al [13] describe a new data packet format which allows flexible scalability of the transmission rate, and a data compression method, termed as SHCM, which maximizes the efficacy of this format by exploiting the three-dimensional (3-D) scene structure. Our method uses quantization to achieve data compression in a manner somewhat similar to the above paper, but incorporates intelligent exploitation of the hierarchical structure of the human skeletal model.…”

A case for 3D streaming on peer-to-peer networks

“…Object streaming has also been studied in the context of specific file formats such as X3D [Fogel et al 2001] and MPEG-4's BIFS [Hosseini and Georganas 2002]. As typical 3D contents may include other data types besides polygonal meshes, streaming techniques may also tilt toward specific types of data, such as textures [Marvie and Bouatouch 2003], animations [Hijiri et al 2000], and scene descriptions [Sahm et al 2004], among others.…”

Human Motion Capture Data Compression by Model-Based Indexing: A Power Aware Approach

“…Endo et al [12] propose quantization of the motion type, rather than the motion data itself. Hijiri et al [13] describe a new data packet format which allows flexible scalability of the transmission rate, and a data compression method, termed as SHCM, which maximizes the efficacy of this format by exploiting the 3D scene structure. The proposed method in this paper uses quantization to achieve data compression in a manner somewhat similar to the above work, but incorporates intelligent exploitation of the hierarchical structure of the human skeletal model.…”