Course info

Authors: Leila De Floriani, Enrico Puppo.

Level: Intermediate.

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of 3D computer graphics, and geometric modeling techniques.

Description: This series of four lectures on mesh simplification are part of a Master and PhD course taught at Department of Computer Science of the University of Genova. In these lectures, we present algorithms for simplification of triangle meshes. Specifically:

• In the first lecture, we introduce some background notions on surface modeling, and we give an overview of techniques for error computation. We define the simplification problem and the basic ingredients of a simplification algorithm.
• In the second lecture, we focus on modifications on structured and unstructured meshes, and we consider both triangle and tetrahedral meshes. We also present procedural encoding for such modifications which form the basis for progressive as well as multi-resolution models.
• In the third lecture, we describe two basic approaches to simplification: we present the structure of a refinement and of a coarsening mesh simplification algorithm. We discuss in detail the case of 2D scalar fields.
• In the fourth lecture, we present an overview of simplification algorithms for triangle meshes describing free-form surfaces.

Literature:

P. Cignoni, C. Montani, R. Scopigno, A Comparison of Mesh Simplification Algorithms, Computer and Graphics, 22(1), 1998

L. De Floriani, P. Magillo, Multi-resolution Mesh Representations - Models and Data Structures, European School on Multiresolution Geometric Modeling, 2001.

H. Edelsbrunner, Geometry and topology for mesh generation, Cambridge University Press, 2001

M. Garland, Multiresolution modeling: Survey and Future Opportunities, Eurographics'99, State-Of-The-ART Report, 1999.

P. Heckbert and M.Garland, Survey of Polygonal Surface Simplification Algorithms, Course Notes SIGGRAPH 1997.

P. Lindstrom , G.Turk, Evaluation of Memory-less Simplification, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 5(2), 1999

D. Luebke, Developer's Survey of Polygonal Simplification Algorithms, IEEE Computer Graphics &Applications, May 2001.

D.Luebke, M.Reddy, J.Cohen, A.Varshney, B.Watson, and R.Huebner. Level of Detail for 3D Graphics, Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, 2002.

Format:

Slides in pdf-format.

Course material

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3
4. Part 4