Partitioning 3D surface meshes using watershed segmentation

This paper describes a method for partitioning 3D surface meshes into usefu l segments. The proposed method generalizes morphological watersheds, an im age segmentation technique, to 3D surfaces. This surface segmentation uses the total curvature of the surface as an indication of region boundaries. T he surface is segmented into patches. where each patch has a relatively con sistent curvature throughout, and is bounded by areas of higher, or drastic ally different, curvature, This algorithm has applications for a variety of important problems in visualization and geometrical modeling including 3D feature extraction, mesh reduction, texture mapping 3D surfaces, and comput er aided design.