David Luebke
University of Virginia
IEEE Computer Graphics &Applications (May 2001).
Abstract
Polygonal models currently dominate inter-active computer graphics. This is chiefly
because of their mathematical simplicity: polygonal
models lend themselves to simple, regular rendering
algorithms that embed well in hardware, which has in
turn led to widely available polygon
rendering accelerators for every
platform. Unfortunately, the complexity
of these models—measured
by the number of polygons—seems
to grow faster than the ability of our
graphics hardware to render them
interactively. Put another way, the
number of polygons we want always
seems to exceed the number of polygons
we can afford.
Polygonal simplification techniques
offer one solution
for developers grappling with
complex models. These methods
simplify the polygonal geometry of
small, distant, or otherwise unimportant
portions of the model, seeking
to reduce the rendering cost without a significant
loss in the scene’s visual content. This is at once a very
current and a very old idea in computer graphics. As
early as 1976, James Clark described the benefits of representing
objects within a scene at several resolutions,
and flight simulators have long used hand-crafted multiresolution
airplane models to guarantee a constant
frame rate. Recently, a flurry of research has targeted
generating such models automatically. If you’re considering
using polygonal simplification to speed up your
3D application, this article should help you choose
among the bewildering array of published algorithms.
Paper
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