More than a Mesh: Encoding Metadata in the Lower Positional Bits of Polygonal Models

Abstract

Vertices in 3D meshes are typically stored with more precision than is needed for many applications. In this thesis we present a method to use this surplus of precision to store additional metadata in the mesh and connect to a variety of online and offline applications, all while still being able to use the mesh as-is in the graphics pipeline. We apply this method to five different use cases. We show that we can store ambient occlusion to a level which is imperceptible to its vertex coloured equivalent. We further describe a method to link to online services through an encoded URL, and introduce our machine learning based subdivision surface approach which uses the extra precision to store user driven adjustments. We then describe a method to store an embedding that can be used to retrieve similar meshes from an online database. The final example is a method to store information to create a prefractured version of the mesh.