Multiresolution representations for surfaces meshes based on the vertex decimation method

The vertex decimation is a general mesh simplification approach. By successively removing vertices a hierarchy of different levels of detail (LOD) is generated during the simplification process. This paper enhances our 1996 mesh simplification algorithm with error control (R. Klein, G. Liebich and W. Strasser. Mesh reduction with error control. In Visualization 96, ed. R. Yagel, ACM, November 1996) to preserve some information about the normals of the original faces into the resulting simplified data. This enables us to build multiresolution models (MRM) which allow one to control the normal deviation and to extract view dependent-adaptive lighting sensitive approximations of the original meshes. Furthermore, the paper gives a general overview on MRMs generated by vertex removal algorithms. Where necessary material from our previous publications scattered in various conference proceedings and short papers (some of them hard to access) is included and extended with detailed algorithms and proofs. Although formulated for a vertex removal algorithm the results apply to other simplification algorithms and MRMs as well, namely to edge and triangle collapse algorithms. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.