What's in a Mesh? A Survey of 3D Mesh Representation Schemes

Geometric meshes consist of a set of points in 3D space connected in a (typically manifold) graph structure. As such a vector of 3n real values may represent them, where n is the number of vertices in the mesh. Unfortunately, although straightforward, this is not a very useful representation of the mesh, as it is difficult to naturally manipulate the mesh data using this representation. A better representation would capture the spatial correlation between vertices, be invariant to a class of natural transformations, not be too redundant, and be efficiently invertible. Recent years have seen the development of a variety of mesh representation schemes, intended primarily for mesh editing applications. The author surveys some of these representation schemes, discuss the pros and cons, and demonstrate how the may be used to edit, animate and morph mesh datasets.