A method of automatic cage generation by variational remeshing method

In recent years, with the improvement of computer performance, it has become possible to represent dense mesh models in computer graphics. However, performing a manipulation on the dense mesh models might be costly. In order to reduce the computational cost during manipulations, a dense model is often manipulated through coarse bounding cages that enclose the model. However, generating cages are usually tedious and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose a method of automatic cage generation by a variational remeshing method. We first evaluate the features, such as curvature, dihedral angles, of an original triangle model and then voxelize it. We extract and triangulate the outer faces of the voxels and transfer the features of the original model to the outer faces. Finally, we apply a variational remeshing method to this triangular mesh. The variational remeshing method is a method minimizing an energy function which corresponds to a good solution by global relaxation until convergence. An experiment result demonstrates that our method is effective.