On 20/11/2007, Geoffrey Zhu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have N tabulated data points { (x_i, y_i, z_i) } that describes a 3D > surface. The surface is pretty "smooth." However, the number of data > points is too large to be stored and manipulated efficiently. To make > it easier to deal with, I am looking for an easy method to compress > and approximate the data. Maybe the approximation can be described by > far fewer number of coefficients. > > If you can give me some hints about possible numpy or non-numpy > solutions or let me know where is better to ask this kind of question, > I would really appreciate it.
This is an important task in computer graphics, in particular, in the field of multiresolution modelling. If you look up "surface simplification" you'll find many references to articles. I don't know of a library offhand that does it, let alone one that is accessible from python, but you could try looking at a toolkit that does isosurface visualization - these are surfaces that can often be simplified enormously. In particular it looks like VTK might be able to do what you want. Anne _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list Numpy-discussion@scipy.org http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion