Daniel Orville Benson

US Patent:

6556206, Apr 29, 2003

Filed:

Dec 9, 1999

Appl. No.:

09/457805

Inventors:

Daniel Conrad Benson - Seattle WA
Brent Baxter - Plainsboro NJ
Soeren Moritz - Hausen, DE
Chris Muench - Redmond WA

Assignee:

Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. - Princeton NJ

International Classification:

G06T 1570

US Classification:

345473, 345427

Abstract:

A set of viewpoints for a given scene of 3D objects is defined by a system that restricts the degrees of freedom available to a user, through use of a bounding surface (a viewpoint sphere), and provides varying degrees of automation ranging from predefined viewpoints to generated tour paths, to interactive selection using free navigation. The system calculates the scene sphere, which is the minimum bounding sphere that contains the set of objects in the scene and then finds the viewpoint sphere, which is done by calculating the viewpoint sphere radius. The user then chooses the mode of viewpoint selection as either completely automated, semi-automated, or free navigation. The output is a set of viewpoints for the given scene of objects.