We propose the idea of simplification envelopes for generating a hierarchy of level-of-detail approximations for a given polygonal model. Our approach guarantees that all points of an approximation are within a user-specifiable distance # from the original model and that all points of the original model are within a distance # from the approximation. Simplificationenvelopes provide a general framework within which a large collection of existing simplification algorithms can run. We demonstrate this technique in conjunction with two algorithms, one local, the other global. The local algorithm provides a fast method for generating approximations to large input meshes (at least hundreds of thousands of triangles). The global algorithm provides the opportunity to avoid local "minima" and possibly achieve better simplifications as a result. Each approximation attempts to minimize the total number of polygons required to satisfy the above # constraint. The key advantages of our approach are...

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In this survey we consider geometric techniques which have been used to measure the similarity or distance between shapes, as well as to approximate shapes, or interpolate between shapes. Shape is a modality which plays a key role in many disciplines, ranging from computer vision to molecular biology. We focus on algorithmic techniques based on computational geometry that have been developed for shape matching, simplification, and morphing. 1 Introduction The matching and analysis of geometric patterns and shapes is of importance in various application areas, in particular in computer vision and pattern recognition, but also in other disciplines concerned with the form of objects such as cartography, molecular biology, and computer animation. The general situation is that we are given two objects A, B and want to know how much they resemble each other. Usually one of the objects may undergo certain transformations like translations, rotations or scalings in order to be matched with th...

Motivated by applications in computer graphics, visualization, and scientific computation, we study the computational complexity of the following problem: Given a set S of n points sampled from a bivariate function f(x; y) and an input parameter " ? 0, compute a piecewise linear function \Sigma(x; y) of minimum complexity (that is, a xy-monotone polyhedral surface, with a minimum number of vertices, edges, or faces) such that j\Sigma(x p ; y p ) \Gamma z p j "; for all (x p ; y p ; z p ) 2 S: We prove that the decision version of this problem is NP-Hard . The main result of our paper is a polynomial-time approximation algorithm that computes a piecewise linear surface of size O(K o log K o ), where K o is the complexity of an optimal surface satisfying the constraints of the problem. The technique

We present a simple,robust, and practical method for object simplification for applications where gradual elimination of high frequency details is desired. This is accomplished by converting an object into multi-resolution volume rastersusing a controlled filtering and sampling technique.Amultiresolution triangle-mesh hierarchycan then be generated by applying the Marching Cubes algorithm. We f urther propose an adaptive surface generation algorithm to reduce the number of triangles generated by the standardMarching Cubes. Our method simplifies the topology of objects in a controlled fashion. In addition, at eachlevel of detail, multi-layered meshes can be used for an efficient antialiased rendering.

This dissertation explores some techniques for automatic approximation of geometric objects. My thesis is that using and extending concepts from computational geometry can help us in devising efficient and parallelizable algorithms for automatically constructing useful detail hierarchies for geometric objects. We have demonstrated this by developing new algorithms for two kinds of geometric approximation problems that have been motivated by a single driving problem --- the efficient computation and display of smooth solvent-accessible molecular surfaces. The applications of these detail hierarchies are in biochemistry and computer graphics. The smooth solvent-accessible surface of a molecule is useful in studying the structure and interactions of proteins, in particular for attacking the protein-substrate docking problem. We have developed a parallel linear-time algorithm for computing molecular surfaces. Molecular surfaces are equivalent to the weighted ff-hulls. Thus our work is pot...

We give an O(n log n)-time method for finding a best k-link piecewise-linear function approximating an n-point planar data set using the well-known uniform metric to measure the error, ffl 0, of the approximation. Our method is based upon new characterizations of such functions, which we exploit to design an efficient algorithm using a plane sweep in "ffl space" followed by several applications of the parametric searching technique. The previous best running time for this problem was O(n 2 ). 1 Introduction Approximating a set S = f(x 1 ; y 1 ); (x 2 ; y 2 ); : : : ; (x n ; y n )g of points in the plane by a function is a classic problem in applied mathematics. The general goals in this area of research are to find a function F belonging to a class of functions F such that each F 2 F is simple to describe, represent, and compute and such that the chosen F approximates S well. For example, one may desire that F be the class of linear or piecewise-linear functions, and, for any parti...

We give an algorithm to compute a (Euclidean) shortest path in a polygon with h holes and a total of n vertices. The algorithm uses O(n) space and requires O(n + h² log n) time.

We propose a new approach to the automatic generation of triangular irregular networks from dense terrain models. We have developed and implemented an algorithm based on the greedy principle used to compute minimum-link paths in polygons. Our algorithm works by taking greedy cuts ("bites") out of a simple closed polygon that bounds the yet-to-be triangulated region. The algorithm starts with a large polygon, bounding the whole extent of the terrain to be triangulated, and works its way inward, performing at each step one of three basic operations: ear cutting, greedy biting, and edge splitting. We give experimental evidence that our method is competitive with current algorithms and has the potential to be faster and to generate many fewer triangles. Also, it is able to keep the structural terrain fidelity at almost no extra cost in running time and it requires very little memory beyond that for the input height array. 1 Introduction A terrain is the graph of a function of two variabl...

We show that several well-known optimization problems involving 3-dimensional convex polyhedra and decision trees are NP-hard or NP-complete. One of the techniques we employ is a linear-time method for realizing a planar 3-connected triangulation as a convex polyhedron, which may be of independent interest. Key words: Convex polyhedra, approximation, Steinitz's theorem, planar graphs, art gallery theorems, decision trees. 1 Introduction Convex polyhedra are fundamental geometric structures (e.g., see [20]). They are the product of convex hull algorithms, and are key components for problems in robot motion planning and computer-aided geometric design. Moreover, due to a beautiful theorem of Steinitz [20, 38], they provide a strong link between computational geometry and graph theory, for Steinitz shows that a graph forms the edge structure of a convex polyhedra if and only if it is planar and 3-connected. Unfortunately, algorithmic problems dealing with 3-dimensional convex polyhedra ...