Efficient Representation of 3D Human Head Models

Human head models are used in many applications of computer graphics such as computer animation and cyberspace communications. Spherical harmonic shape representation decomposes the surface into its spatial surface frequency components by 3D multiresolution techniques. This paper demonstrates that spherical harmonic representation is particularly suited for modelling of the general 3D human head shape due to the originally rounded surface geometry. Operating from range data the SH representation ignores fine surface detail and retains the general shape suitable for texture mapping. The SH surface is represented with a limited number of bases function coefficients, analogous to Fourier series decomposition. It is shown that the total data amount to represent any human head SH model can be limited to a few thousand bits, with quantized and variable-length coded parameters. The SH models can be reconstructed from the parameters in wire-frame format at the desired polygon resolution and post-processed with conventional graphics utilities.