Fast mesh simplification for progressive transmission

A very fast mesh simplification algorithm based on half-edge collapse is proposed in this work with a focus on progressive graphic transmission applications. We generalize the Quadric Error Metric (QEM) method to accommodate new topological operations. A flatness criterion is combined with the defined metric to preserve the visual quality of simplified meshes. We further adopt the vertex-based priority queue to accelerate the simplification speed. It is shown by experimental results that our method can achieve similar results as the QEM algorithm with a faster speed.