Simplifying massive datasets with color and texture in 3D real-time game engine development

Abstract

Nowadays, the polygonal datasets in many applications are getting larger. These massive datasets has hundreds millions of triangles. This is due to the drastic improvement over scanning technology and increasing complexity in computer simulations. In these datasets, they are not only containing the geometric primitives such as vertex position and vertex normal. Nevertheless, they are also associated with their surface attributes. The surface attributes are important to raise the realism of the object. For instance, the attributes include the color and texture of the triangles. While the performance of graphics hardware also seen a drastic rise in these years, however, displaying massive datasets is still a crucial problem especially in real-time and interactive application such as in game environment. Therefore, automatic simplification on massive datasets while preserving its surface attributes are introduced. In this paper, we present a preliminary approach to simplify the model using modified memory insensitive technique and then organize the data in an octree structure. Conventional vertex clustering technique is used to simplify mesh. At the same time, generalized quadric error metrics is used to preserve the color and texture of the polygonal object. During run-time, the portion of the visible mesh is rendered view-dependently. This approach is fairly simple and fast. In conjunction, the system is demonstrated in game environment.