FastMesh: efficient view-dependent meshing

Abstract

The article presents an optimized view-dependent meshing framework for adaptive and continuous level-of-detail (LOD) rendering in real-time. Multiresolution triangle mesh representations are an important tool for adapting triangle mesh complexity in real-time rendering environments. Ideally, for interactive visualization, a triangle mesh is simplified to the maximal tolerated perceptual error, and thus mesh simplification is view-dependent. The paper introduces an efficient hierarchical multiresolution triangulation framework based on a half-edge triangle mesh data structure, and presents an optimized computation of several view-dependent error metrics within that framework, providing conservative error bounds. The presented approach called FastMesh, is highly efficient both in space and time cost, and it spends only a fraction of the time required for rendering to perform the error calculations and dynamic mesh updates.