Coding of animated 3-D wireframe models for internet streaming applications

In this paper we present a coding technique for 3-D animated wireframe models, suitable for Internet streaming. First we present the MPEG-4 like coding scheme with simple RTP packetisation, and provide details of the achieved compression efficiency. Then, we describe a distortion metric for such a signal and we conduct experiments to study the effect of packet loss, following a bursty packet loss model that approximates a simulated IP network. Our experiments examine the performance of the coding scheme for a simple streaming scenario with different sequence configurations. The results show that short-term and short average length burst losses of up to 30% have a logarithmic effect on the decrease of the animation smoothness in the case of simple differential coding. This logarithmic decrease is corrected to linear by inserting I-frames to the sequence at the expense of reduced compression. The result is smoother animation.