Full-range approximation of triangulated polyhedra

We propose a new algorithm for automatically computing approximations of a given polyhedral object at different levels of details. The application for this algorithm is the display of very complex scenes, where many objects are seen with a range of varying levels of detail. Our approach is similar to the region-merging method used for image segmentation. We iteratively collapse edges, based on a measure of the geometric deviation from the initial shape. When edges are merged in the right order, this strategy produces a continuum of valid approximations of the original object, which can be used for faster rendering at vastly different scales.