Part-type Segmentation of Articulated Voxel-Shapes using the Junction Rule

We present a part-type segmentation method for articulated voxel-shapes based on curve skeletons. Shapes are considered to consist of several simpler, intersecting shapes. Our method is based on the junction rule: the observation that two intersecting shapes generate an additional junction in their joined curve-skeleton near the place of intersection. For each curve-skeleton point, we construct a piecewise-geodesic loop on the shape surface. Starting from the junctions, we search along the curve skeleton for points whose associated loops make for suitable part cuts. The segmentations are robust to noise and discretization artifacts, because the curve skeletonization incorporates a single user-parameter to filter spurious curve-skeleton branches. Furthermore, segment borders are smooth and minimally twisting by construction. We demonstrate our method on several real-world examples and compare it to existing part-type segmentation methods.