Simplification method for textured polygonal meshes based on structural appearance

This paper proposes an image-based simplification method for textured triangle meshes that preserves the structural appearance of textured models. Models used in interactive applications are usually composed of textured polygonal meshes. Since textures play an important role in the final appearance of the simplified model, great distortions can be obtained if texture information is not considered in the simplification process. Our method is based on an information channel created between a sphere of viewpoints and the texture regions. This channel enables us to define both the Shannon entropy and the mutual information associated with each viewpoint, and their respective generalizations based on Harvda–Charvat–Tsallis entropy. Several experiments show that great visual distortions are avoided when textured models are simplified using our method.