Animating a Camera for Viewing a Planar Polygon

Many applications, ranging from visualization applications such as architectural walkthroughs to robotic applications such as surveillance, could benefit from an automatic camera trajectory planner. This paper deals with that problem. We have automated the process of inspecting the outside of a simple two-dimensional polygon, given a few user parameters. Our algorithm preprocesses the polygon using Visibility Graph like concepts, and creates a visibility data structure for each polygon edge. From these structures, "good" camera zones are computed. Natural cubic splines are then used to create a closed camera trajectory that passes solely inside the zones. An iterative process refines the trajectory by minimizing a cost function until it converges to the optimal result. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—viewing algorithms; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism —Animation;

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: VMV
• Authors: Daniel Brunstein, Gill Barequet, Craig Gotsman
• Keywords: Camera Trajectory, Camera Trajectory Planner, Simple Two-dimensional Polygon, VMV 2003, VMV 2008