Fast and effective stripification of polygonal surface models

Computing a succint encoding of a triangulation of a polyhedral model to transmit and render it efficiently is important in graphics and visualization. CAD/CAM and virtual environment applications often require that very complex datasets be visualized at real-time rates. Current 3D graphics rendering hardware often faces a memory bus bandwidth bottleneck in the processor-to-graphics pipeline. To avoid rendering unnecessary triangles, it is common to simplify and approximate complex models. But it is also important to minimize the time needed to transmit n triangles that are to rendered by compressing the geometric and topological information in a model. The efficient stripification of polygonal surface models is discussed.