Selective refinement of progressive meshes

摘要

An efficient, lossless, continuous-resolution representation (the "PM representation") of highly detailed geometric models for computer graphics specifies a succession of progressively more detailed polygonal meshes (i.e., "progressive meshes") as a base polygonal mesh and a sequence of complete mesh refinement transformations (e.g., the vertex split transformation) that approximate the model at progressively finer levels of detail. Procedures for storing and transmitting geometric models using the PM representation address several practical problems in computer graphics: smooth geomorphing of level-of-detail approximations, progressive transmission, mesh compression, and selective refinement. An optimized mesh simplification procedure constructs the PM representation of a model from an arbitrary polygonal mesh, while preserving the geometry of the original mesh as well as its overall appearance as defined by its discrete and scalar appearance attributes such as material identifiers, color values, normals, and texture coordinates. In particular, the PM representation and these procedures preserve discontinuity curves such as creases and material boundaries of the geometric model.