Real-Time Continuous Multi-Resolution Method for Models of Arbitrary Topology

Many multiresolution methods have been proposed. Most of them emphasize accuracy and hence are slow. Some methods may be fast, but they may not preserve the geometry of the model. Although there are a few real-time multiresolution methods available, they are developed mainly for handling large terrain models. In this paper, we present a very efficient multiresolution method for continuously reducing the resolution of a triangle model by incrementally removing triangles from it. The algorithm is simple to implement, requires no complicated data structures, and has a linear triangle deletion rate. We also present a method for caching the most recent sequence of triangle removal operations into a list, called the simplification list, so that it is possible to continuously increase the resolution of the model by inserting triangles in the reverse order of the sequence. We will compare our method with Hoppe’s progressive meshes. Towards the end of the paper, we discuss the performance and memory usage of our method.