Iterative Stripification of a Triangle Mesh:
Focus on Data Structures

Massimiliano B. Porcu and Riccardo Scateni
Università di Cagliari
Dip.to Matematica e Informatica
I-09124, Cagliari
Italy

e-mail: riccardo@unica.it

http://ugo.sc.unica.it

Abstract

In this paper we describe the data structure and the implementation details of the tunneling algorithm for generating a set of triangle strips from a mesh of triangles. The algorithm uses a simple topological operation on the dual graph of the mesh, to generate an initial stripification and iteratively rearrange and decrease the number of strips. Our method is a major improvement of a proposed one originally devised for both static and continuous level-of-detail (CLOD) meshes and retains this feature. The usage of a dynamical identification strategy for the strips allows us to drastically reduce the length of the searching paths in the graph needed for the rearrangement and produce loop-free triangle strips without any further controls and post-processing, while requiring a more sophisticated implementation to manage the search and undo operations.