Modeling arbitrary objects based on geometric surface conformity

In this paper, we address the problem of efficient and flexible modeling of arbitrary three-dimensional (3-D) objects and the accurate tracking of the generated model, These goals are reached by combining available multiview image analysis tools with a straightforward 3-D modeling method, which expl oit well-established techniques from both computer vision and computer grap hics, improving and combining them with new strategies. The basic idea of t he technique presented is to use feature points and relevant edges in the i mages as nodes and edges of an initial two-dimensional mire grid, The metho d is adaptive in the sense that an initial rough surface approximation is p rogressively refined at the locations where the triangular patches do not a pproximate the surface accurately. The approximation error is measured acco rding to the distance of the model to the object surface, taking into accou nt the reliability of the depth estimated from the stereo image analysis. O nce the initial wireframe is available, it is deformed and updated from fra me to frame according to the motion of the object points chosen to be nodes . At the end of this process we obtain a temporally consistent 3-D model, w hich accurately approximates the visible object surface and reflects the ph ysical characteristics of the surface with as few planar patches as possibl e. The performance of the presented methods is confirmed by several compute r experiments.