METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMPRESSING TEXTURE INFORMATION OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL (3D) MODELS

A 3D model can be modeled using “pattern-instance?representation. To describe the vertices and triangles, properties of the instance, for example, texture, color, and normal, are adjusted to correspond to the order in the pattern. The texture of an instance is encoded depending on its similarity with the texture of a corresponding pattern. When instance texture is identical or almost identical to the pattern texture, the instance texture is not encoded and the pattern texture will be used to reconstruct the instance texture. When the instance texture is similar to the pattern texture, the instance texture is predictively encoded from the pattern texture, that is, the difference between the instance texture and pattern texture is encoded, and the instance texture is determined as a combination of the pattern texture and the difference.