SQUEEZE: fast and progressive decompression of triangle meshes

Abstract

An ideal triangle mesh compression technology would simultaneously support the following objectives: (1) progressive refinements of the received mesh during decompression, (2) nearly optimal compression ratios for both geometry and connectivity, and (3) in-line, real-time decompression algorithms for hardware or software implementations. Because these three objectives impose contradictory constraints, previously reported efforts have focused primarily on one (sometimes two) of these objectives. The SQUEEZE technique introduced in this paper addresses all three constraints simultaneously, and attempts to provide the best possible compromise. For a mesh of T triangles, SQUEEZE compresses the connectivity to 3.7T bits, which is competitive with the best progressive compression techniques reported so far. The geometric prediction error encoding technique introduced in this paper leads to a geometry compression that is improved by 20% over that of previous schemes. Our initial implementation on a 300-MHz CPU achieved a decompression rate of up to 46,000 triangles per second. SQUEEZE downloads a model through a number of successive refinement stages, providing the benefit of progressivity.