Concentric strips: algorithms and architecture for the compression/decompression of triangle meshes

The complexity of triangle meshes is growing rapidly due to the need for higher accuracy. As a consequence, the network transmission delay of 3D graphics data is the major bottleneck in computer graphics. An interesting solution to this limited bandwidth is the compression technique. This solution implies the necessity of specific hardware to reconstruct the mesh at the entrance of the graphics pipeline. In this work we present a new compression connectivity algorithm for triangle meshes. This is a simple algorithm which improves the compression ratio (nearly 1.5 bits/triangle) by previously reported schemes. Due to its simplicity, it is very suitable for hardware implementation. This implementation has a simple and efficient structure, low storage requirements and a reconstruction rate of one triangle per cycle.