Simplification of 3D Triangular Mesh for Level of Detail Computation

Advance three-dimensional (3D) scanning devices can create very detail complex 3D polygonal models. Though the random access memory (RAM) and parallel computing in graphics card are enormously improved, many modelers still confront with intricacy of slow computing due to exponential increase of number of polygons for realistic look of surface models. In this paper, a simple and fast triangular mesh simplification method based on half-edge collapsed scheme is proposed. The Euclidean distance of each triangle edges and the disparity between two adjacent triangles are computed for decimation validation. The to-be-collapsed vertices and edges are conducted in priority queue data structure. The empirical results show that the proposed simplified model shape is well-preserved and is computation efficient. Two existing popular methods (FMLOD and FSIMP) are to be compared with the proposed method and the result demonstrates a rational outcome and is comparable in visual quality.