Efficient Decimation of Complex Triangle Meshes

Due to their simplicity triangle meshes are used to represen t urfaces in many applications. Since the number of triangles of ten goes beyond the capabilities of computer graphics hardware , a large variety of mesh simplification algorithms has been proposed in the last years. In this paper we identify major requirements for the practical usability of general purpose mesh reduction algo rithms. The driving idea is to understand mesh reduction algorithms as a software extension to make more complex meshes accessible w ith limited hardware resources. We show how these requirements ca be efficiently attained and discuss implementation aspects in detail. We present a mesh decimation scheme that fulfills these d sign goals and which has already been evaluated by several us ers from different application areas. We apply this algorithm t o typical meshes to demonstrate its performance.