Method for establishing a deformable 3D model of an element, and associated system

1. A method for generating a three-dimensional morphable model of an element from an initial database of examples of such elements providing data allowing, for each of the elements of the initial database, a three-dimensional meshed surface based on points and on a triangular network connecting said points to be determined, wherein:

for each example element of the initial database, at each point of its meshed surface, the value of at least one parameter representative of the shape of the surface of the element at this point is determined in order to obtain an improved database of example elements;

for each example element of the improved database, corresponding to the elements of the initial database, flattening is carried out on the three-dimensional meshed surface in order to obtain a two-dimensional representation of said meshed surface;

in all of the two-dimensional representations of the meshed surfaces of said elements, a plurality of respective points are brought into registration using said determined values of the one or more parameters representative of the shape of the surface of the element at said points and a method for analyzing said two-dimensional representations of the meshed surfaces;

on the basis of said registered points, said three-dimensional meshed surfaces of the initial database are down-sampled;

on the basis of the three-dimensional meshed surfaces of the initial database, a model of the element comprising an average shape of the element and deformation modes is determined; and

said average shape of the element is re-meshed.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said one or more parameters representative of the shape of the surface of the element at a point of the meshed surface of an example of the initial database comprise a local curvature at said point and/or a shape descriptor at said point.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 , wherein said local curvature comprises a minimum curvature and/or a maximum curvature and/or a Gaussian curvature and/or an average curvature.

4. The method as claimed in claim 2 , wherein the shape descriptor comprises a surface patch histogram of index shape.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said flattening uses an ABF, LSCM, ABF++, or HLSCM method.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said registration uses a segmentation of the two-dimensional representations into N c curvature levels that are uniformly distributed over the range of the values taken by the values of the one or more parameters representative of the shape of the surface of the element.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said registration uses a segmentation of the two-dimensional representations into N c curvature levels that takes into account the statistical distribution of the values taken by the values of the one or more parameters representative of the shape of the surface of the element.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said registration uses a number k S manu of manually registered points.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8 , the method being semi-automatic, wherein, during said registration, the number k S manu of points registered manually for the current element decreases with the number of processed elements.

10. The method as claimed in claim 8 , the method being automatic and based on snakes, wherein the number N S manu of points registered manually is zero.

11. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said element is a right ear and/or a left ear and/or the head, and/or the torso of an individual.

12. A system for generating a three-dimensional morphable model of an element from an initial database of examples of such elements providing data allowing, for each of the elements of the initial database, a three-dimensional meshed surface based on points and on a triangular network connecting said points to be determined, comprising a computer configured to implement the method according to claim 1 .