Controlled Topology Simplification

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 rasters using a controlled filtering and sampling technique. A multiresolution triangle-mesh hierarchy can then be generated by applying the Marching Cubes algorithm. We further propose an adaptive surface generation algorithm to reduce the number of triangles generated by the standard Marching Cubes. Our method simplifies the topology of objects in a controlled fashion. In addition, at each level of detail, multi-layered meshes can be used for an efficient antialiased rendering.