Fast-Quadric-Mesh-Simplification
Mesh triangle reduction using quadrics - for Windows, OSX and Linux (thx Chris Rorden)
Summary Since I couldn't find any code that's fast, memory efficient, free and for high quality, I developed my version of the quadric based edge collapse mesh simplification method. It uses a threshold to determine which triangles to delete, which avoids sorting but might lead to lesser quality. It is about 4x as fast as Meshlab and can simplify 2M -> 30k triangles in 3.5 seconds.
Usage The functionality is contained in Simplify.h. The function to call is simplify_mesh(target_count). The code is kept pretty slim, so the main method has just around 400 lines of code.
Obj File Limitations The Obj file may only have one group or object. Its a very simple reader/writer, so don't try to use multiple objects in one file
Windows, OSX and Linux Command Line Tool added
Thanks to Chris Rorden for creating a command line version and providing binaries for OSX and Linux.
Pascal Version
Chris Rorden further created a pascal version that you can find here
https://github.com/neurolabusc/Fast-Quadric-Mesh-Simplification-Pascal-
License : MIT
Please don't forget to cite this page if you use the code!
Projects Using this Method
Surf Ice is a tool for surface rendering the cortex with overlays to illustrate tractography, network connections, anatomical atlases and statistical maps. While there are many alternatives, Surf Ice is easy to use and uses advances shaders to generate stunning images. It supports many popular mesh formats [3ds, ac3d, BrainVoyager (srf), ctm, Collada (dae), dfs, dxf, FreeSurfer (Asc, Srf, Curv, gcs, Pial, W), GIfTI (gii), gts, lwo, ms3d, mz3, nv, obj, off, ply, stl, vtk], connectome formats (edge/node) and tractography formats [bfloat, pdb, tck, trk, vtk].
THREE.JS Sample using the Method
Live Web Version by Tiger Yuhao Huang
Unity Mesh Decimator by Mattias Edlund / Whinarn
.NET Mesh Decimator by Mattias Edlund / Whinarn
Javascript Mesh Decimator by Andrew Taber / ataber
Javascript Mesh Decimator by Joshua Koo / zz85
Java Mesh Decimator by Jayfella
Port from C++ to pure C by Chris Rorden. Includes routines for Marching Cubes and Laplacian HC mesh smoothing.