A Survey and Analysis of Common Polygonization Methods and Optimization Techniques

Abstract

Implicitly defined surfaces of scalar fields (isosurfaces) are a common entity in scientific and engineering science. Polygonizing an isosurface allows storing it conventionally and permits hardware assisted rendering, an essential condition to achieve real-time display. In addition the polygonal approximation of an isosurface is used for simplified geometric operations such as collision detection and surface analysis. Optimization Techniques are frequently employed to speed up the polygonization algorithm or to reduce the size of the resulting polygon mesh.