Research of Edge-Collapse-Based 3-D Model Simplification

Highly detailed geometric models are rapidly becoming common-place in computer graphics. But sometimes it is often desirable to use approximations in place of excessively detailed models to control processing time. This paper introduces a surface simplification algorithm that based on edge-collapse. The algorithm uses quadric error metrics to confirm the position of new vertex in order to control the error, and gives a new cost function of the edge cost. This algorithm can preserve the important feature of original 3D model efficiently and control the error effectively. The results show that this algorithm is memory efficient, allowing the simplification of very large polygonal models, and can rapidly produce high quality approximations of polygonal models.