Segmentation of temporal mesh sequences into rigidly moving components

In this paper is considered the segmentation of meshes into rigid components given temporal sequences of deforming meshes. We propose a fully automatic approach that identifies model parts that consistently move rigidly over time. This approach can handle meshes independently reconstructed at each time instant. It allows therefore for sequences of meshes with varying connectivities as well as varying topology. It incrementally adapts, merges and splits segments along a sequence based on the coherence of motion information within each segment. In order to provide tools for the evaluation of the approach, we also introduce new criteria to quantify a mesh segmentation. Results on both synthetic and real data as well as comparisons are provided in the paper.