Uniform remeshing with an adaptive domain: a new scheme for view-dependent level-of-detail rendering of meshes

We present a new algorithm for view-dependent level-of-detail rendering of meshes. Not only can it effectively resolve complex geometry features similar to edge collapse-based schemes, but it also produces meshes that modern graphics hardware can render efficiently. This is accomplished through a novel hybrid approach: for each frame, we view-dependently refine the progressive mesh (PM) representation of the original mesh and use the output as the base domain of uniform regular refinements. The algorithm exploits frame-to-frame coherence and only updates portions of the output mesh corresponding to modified domain triangles. The PM representation is built using a custom volume preservation-based error function. A simple k-d tree enhanced jump-and-walk scheme is used to quickly map from the dynamic base domain to the original mesh during regular refinements. In practice, the PM refinement provides a view-optimized base domain for later regular refinements. The regular refinements ensure almost-everywhere regularity of output meshes, allowing optimization for vertex cache coherence and caching of geometry data in high-performance graphics memory. Combined, they also have the effect of allowing our algorithm to operate on uniform clusters of triangles instead of individual ones, reducing CPU workload.