Surface-preserving robust watermarking of 3-D shapes

Area of Science:

• Computer Graphics
• Digital Watermarking
• Geometric Modeling

Background:

• Digital watermarking is crucial for protecting intellectual property of 3D models.
• Existing methods face challenges in balancing invisibility, robustness, and embedding capacity.
• Mesh representations require specialized watermarking techniques due to their discrete nature.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a new statistical watermarking approach for 3D mesh objects.
• To enhance robustness and invisibility of digital watermarks in 3D models.
• To propose a method that mitigates common watermarking requirements.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the fast marching method (FMM) to define geodesic distance regions on the mesh.
• Embedded single bits by modifying the statistical distribution (mean or variance) of local geodesic distances.
• Adjusted vertex positions within triangle planes to minimize surface distortion during embedding.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated a novel statistical watermarking approach for 3D mesh representations.
• Achieved robust watermark embedding by statistically modifying geodesic distances.
• Experimental results confirmed the method's resilience against various attacks.

Conclusions:

• The proposed FMM-based statistical watermarking is effective for 3D mesh objects.
• The method offers a promising solution for secure and robust digital content protection.
• Minimal surface distortion is achieved while embedding watermark information.