Visual quality enhancement of reconstructed point clouds via color smoothing

An encoding device for point cloud encoding, the encoding device comprising:

• a processor configured to:
• generate, for a three-dimensional (3D) point cloud, two-dimensional (2D) frames, each of the 2D frames including a set of patches representing a cluster of pixels of the 3D point cloud,
• generate a flag that signals when color smoothing is performed,
• generate metadata indicating parameters associated with the color smoothing,
• generate an occupancy map indicating locations of points in the 2D frames that represent valid pixels of the 3D point cloud, and
• encode the 2D frames, the flag, the metadata, and the occupancy map to generate a compressed bitstream;
• and
• a communication interface operably coupled to the processor, the communication interface configured to transmit the compressed bitstream.

A method for point cloud decoding, the method comprising:

• receiving a compressed bitstream;
• decoding the compressed bitstream into two-dimensional (2D) frames that represent a three-dimensional (3D) point cloud, each of the 2D frames including a set of patches representing a cluster of pixels of the 3D point cloud;
• identifying an occupancy map included in the compressed bitstream, the occupancy map indicating locations of points in the 2D frames that represent valid pixels of the 3D point cloud;
• identifying valid boundary points located at a boundary of a patch of the set of patches based on the occupancy map;
• identifying valid neighboring points of each of the valid boundary points of the patch;
• and
• generating the 3D point cloud using the 2D frames based on the valid neighboring points and the valid boundary points.