View-dependent tetrahedral meshing and rendering using arbitrary segments

Abstract

We present a meshing and rendering framework for tetrahedral meshes that constructs a multi-resolution representation and uses this representation to adapt the mesh to rendering parameters. The mesh is partitioned into several segments which are simplified independently. A multi-resolution representation is constructed by merging simplified segments and again simplifying the merged segments. We end up with a (binary) hierarchy of segments whose parent nodes are the simplified versions of their children nodes. We show how the segments of arbitrary levels can be connected efficiently such that the mesh can be adapted fast to rendering parameters at run time. This hierarchy is stored on disc and segments are swapped into the main memory as needed. Our algorithm ensures that the adapted mesh can always be treated like a not-segmented mesh from outside and thus can be used by any renderer. We demonstrate a segmentation technnique that is based on an octree although the multi-resolution representation itself does not rely on any paticular segmentation technique.