Efficient processing of large 3D meshes

Due to their simplicity triangle meshes are often used to represent geometric surfaces. Their main drawback is the large number of triangles that are required to represent a smooth surface. This problem has been addressed by a large number of mesh simplification algorithms which reduce the number of triangles and approximate the initial mesh. Hierarchical triangle mesh representations provide access to a triangle mesh at a desired resolution, without omitting any information. In this paper we present an infrastructure for mesh decimation, geometric mesh smoothing, and interactive multiresolution editing of arbitrary unstructured triangle meshes. In particular, we demonstrate how mesh reduction and geometric mesh smoothing can be combined to provide a powerful and numerically efficient multiresolution smoothing and editing paradigm.