Visibility-Guided Simplification

"Visibility-Guided Simplification"
Eugene Zhang and Greg Turk
Proceedings IEEE Visualization 2002 (to appear)
Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 27- Nov 1, 2002.
Pre-Print of Paper (PDF, 1.8 Mbytes).

Abstract

For some graphics applications, object interiors and hard-to-see regions contribute little to the final images and need not be processed. In this paper, we define a view-independent visibility measure on mesh surfaces based on the visibility function between the surfaces and a surrounding sphere of cameras. We demonstrate the usefulness of this measure with a visibility-guided simplification algorithm.

Mesh simplification reduces the polygon counts of 3D models and speeds up the rendering process. Many mesh simplification algorithms are based on sequences of edge collapses that minimize geometric and attribute errors. By combining the surface visibility measure with a geometric error measure, we obtain simplified models with improvement proportional to the amount of low visibility regions in the original models.

Color-coding of polygonal models based on visibility.

Surrounding an object with a sphere of cameras to determine visibility measure.

A simplified turbine blade: geometry only, original, with visibility.

Turbine blade close-ups.

Visibility-guided simplification of skull: geometry only, original, with visibility.

Go to Greg Turk's Home Page.


This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0083836.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.