Extracting Features and Simplifying Surfaces using Shape Operator

The goal of surface simplification is to reduce the number of triangles in 3D models, while maintaining quality. However, surface simplification can easily destroy the contour features of the original surface. The proposed method exploits the contour geometric characteristics of the surface, using a Shape Operator, to preserve the contour features, reduce the simplification-induced errors, and maintain similarity between the simplified and original models. This study compares the proposed method with the Vertex-Pair Contraction proposed by Garland. Experimental results demonstrate that the Shape Operator can effectively extract the contour features of the surfaces, modify the simplification ranking of feature vertices and adaptively preserve the contour features of the surfaces. That is, the Shape Operator proposed herein can reduce effectively the simplification-induced errors, and maintain the similarity between the simplified and the original models