A variety of skills are required to develop realistic virtual characters. The aim of the CLIPE project is to train the next generation of researchers in virtual humans and make more realistic virtual characters that are capable of interacting naturally with humans, as Yiorgos Chrysanthou, Nuria Pelechano, Nefeli Andreou and Rafael Blanco explain.

In an example a method includes receiving, at processing circuitry, beam lattice data modelling at least part of a three-dimensional object to be generated using additive manufacturing as a beam lattice. A volumetric data model may be determined from the beam lattice data. Determining the volumetric data model may comprise dividing a volume containing the beam lattice data into sub-volumes and categorising the sub- volumes into (I) interior sub-volumes, which are wholly within a beam of the beam lattice; (ii) exterior sub-volumes which are wholly outside the beams of the beam lattice; and (ii) boundary sub-volumes which partially coincide with a beam of the beam lattice. The method may further comprise subdividing boundary sub-volumes and categorising the subdivided sub-volumes until a threshold volume size of boundary sub-volume is reached.

In an example, a method includes receiving, at a processor, an object model describing a geometry of a three-dimensional object, and determining a transformed data model describing a volume containing a modified version of the three-dimensional object as a plurality of categorised contiguous, non-overlapping sub-volumes, wherein the modified version of the three-dimensional object includes a surface offset. Determining the transformed data model may comprises categorising the sub-volumes by defining a first region by determining an area swept by an offset operator when the offset operator is swept around a boundary of the sub-volume and defining a second region, interior to the first region, and indicative of the closest approach of the offset operator to the sub-volume when the offset operator is swept around the boundary. Intersections between a surface of the object model and at least one of the first and second region may be determined. When the surface intersects the second region, the sub-volume may be categorised as interior to the three-dimensional object; and when the surface intersects the first region and not the second region, the sub-volume may categorised as spanning a boundary of the three-dimensional object.

An example method, performed by processing circuitry, includes receiving an object model describing a geometry of a three-dimensional object to be generated by additive manufacturing. A geometrical transformation to be applied to the object model is determined. A first object portion comprising a surface feature of less than a threshold size and a second object portion free of such a surface feature is identified and a transformed model describing a volume containing a modified version of the object as a plurality of contiguous, non-overlapping sub-volumes is determined. Each sub-volume may be categorised as being interior to the object model, exterior to the object model, or a as a boundary sub-volume which spans an object boundary. The modified version of the object is determined by applying the geometrical transformation in the second object portion and not applying the geometrical transformation in the first object portion.

Examples of the present disclosure relate to a method in a three-dimensional printer for printing texture images. Lower resolution images of a texture image from a print file are generated and then selected based on volume pixels to be printed.

En aplicacions en què cal informació de distància a la frontera d'objectes modelats per octrees (per exemple fabricació aditiva), aquesta informació es pot precalcular, però provoca un augment inmanegable de complexitat de l'octree. Aquesta patent consisteix en una forma de fer servir intervals relaxats en comptes d'estrictes amb una reducció significativa de la complexitat de l'octree

In an example, a method includes receiving, at a processor, data representing at least part of an object to be manufactured in a layer-by-layer manufacturing process. A serialised octree representation of at least part of the object may be generated from the data. In the serialised octree representation, nodes are ordered such that (i) a node representing a volume which includes a layer of the object to be generated earlier in an intended order of object generation precedes a node representing a volume which consists of layer(s) of the object to be generated subsequently; (ii) nodes representing a volume which includes a given layer of the object are ordered based on a level of the nodes within the octree representation, wherein parent nodes appear before descendent nodes; and (iii) nodes representing a volume which includes a given layer of the object and being of the same level within the octree representation are ordered according to a location encoding pattern.

In an example, a method includes receiving a first data model of an object to be generated in additive manufacturing, at a processor. Using the processor, a second data model may be determined. Determining the second data model may include generating for each of plurality of contiguous, non-overlapping sub-volumes of a volume containing the object, a sub-volume octree characterising the sub-volume and having a root node. Determining the second data model may further include generating a volume octree characterising the volume containing the object, the volume octree characterising in its lowest nodes the root nodes of the sub-volume octrees.

Medical doctors are often faced with the problem of selecting anchoring points in 3D space. These points are commonly used for measurement tasks, such as lengths of bones, or dimensions of pathological structures (e.g. tumours). Since previous research indicates that measurement tasks can be usually carried out more efficiently in VR environments than in desktop-based systems, we have concentrated on the development of selection tools for medical models. These models have a set of particularities such as the presence of semi-transparencies, and there is a lack of tools for measurement support for such models in VR environments. Our VR-based interaction technique uses the data to automatically generate candidate anchor points, and it is specially focused on the efficient selection of 3D points in datasets rendered using methods with semi-transparency such as Direct Volume Rendering. We will show that our method is effective, precise, and reduces the time and amount of movements required to set the anchor points as compared with other classical techniques based on clipping planes. We also provide a couple of improvements tailored to reduce the inherent imprecision of 3D devices due to hand vibration, and the flexibility in transfer function selection for anchor point definition.

Gastroenterologia y Hepatologia. Volum 37, Número 3, Págs:135--136.

The visualization of volumetric datasets, quite common in medical image processing, has started to receive attention from other communities such as scientific and engineering. The main reason is that it allows the scientists to gain important insights into the data. While the datasets are becoming larger and larger, the computational power does not always go hand to hand, because the requirements of using low-end PCs or mobile phones increase. As a consequence, the selection of an optimal viewpoint that improves user comprehension of the datasets is challenged with time consuming trial and error tasks. In order to facilitate the exploration process, informative viewpoints together with camera paths showing representative information on the model can be determined. In this paper we present a method for representative view selection and path construction, together with some accelerations that make this process extremely fast on a modern GPU.