Polygon Mesh Processing

Geometry processing, or mesh processing, is a fast-growing area of research that uses concepts from applied mathematics, computer science, and engineering to design efficient algorithms for the acquisition, reconstruction, analysis, manipulation, simulation, and transmission of complex 3D models. Applications of geometry processing algorithms already cover a wide range of areas from multimedia, entertainment, and classical computer-aided design, to biomedical computing, reverse engineering, and scientific computing.

Over the last several years, triangle meshes have become increasingly popular, as irregular triangle meshes have developed into a valuable alternative to traditional spline surfaces. This book discusses the whole geometry processing pipeline based on triangle meshes. The pipeline starts with data input, for example, a model acquired by 3D scanning techniques. This data can then go through processes of error removal, mesh creation, smoothing, conversion, morphing, and more. The authors detail techniques for those processes using triangle meshes.