Advance in triangular mesh simplification study

With the development of modern 3D acquisition facilities and tools, large mesh models with high-precision for the representation of complex geometric objects becomes feasible. However, many considerable difficulties have emerged in these huge mesh models, such as the storage capacity and rendering speed of computers. Triangular mesh, which is one of the most popular polygonal meshes, plays an important role in mesh simplification field. Many different methods and algorithms have been put forward to the research of triangular mesh simplification in the past few years. In this paper, triangular mesh simplification algorithms and their corresponding improved algorithms are overviewed. In addition, some recent achievements of triangular mesh simplification in the author´s laboratory (IAP) are presented. Finally, future development and prospects in this area are also discussed and outlined, respectively.