A Level of Detail Model by Merging Near-Coplanar Faces Based on Gauss Sphere
基于高斯球的近似共面合并层次细节模型

Multiple LOD modeling is an effective approach to speed up the rendering of 3D scenes. An algorithm that creates multiple levels of detail for 3D scene by merging near-coplanar faces is presented in this paper. First a Gauss sphere is defined for the modeling of the scene, which is divided into patches uniformly. Faces of objects in the scene are then attached to the respective spherical patches according to their normal direction. If faces attached to the same patch are adjacent to each other, they are merged to form a near coplanar area (superface). Isolated vertices inside the area are removed and the area is retriangularized. To further improve the simplification, vicinity vertices on the border of the area are merged. The algorithm adopts a planar separation rule to support the hierarchical model. The experimental result shows that the algorithm can achieve the desired simplification effect.