Simplifying Surfaces with Color and Texture using Quadric Error Metrics
Michael Garland∗Paul S. Heckbert†

Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract
There are a variety of application areas in which there is a needfor simplifying complex polygonal surface models. These models
often have material properties such as colors, textures, and surface
normals. Our surface simplification algorithm, based on iterativeedge contraction and quadric error metrics, can rapidly produce
high quality approximations of such models. We present a naturalextension of our original error metric that can account for a wide
range of vertex attributes.

v2

contractv

v1

BeforeAfter

Figure 1: Contraction of the edge (v1 , v2 ) into a single point. The
shaded triangles become degenerate and are removed during thecontraction.

CR Categories: I.3.5 [Computer Graphics]: Computational Geometry and Object Modeling—surface and object representations
Keywords:
surface simplification, multiresolution modeling,level of detail, quadric error metric, edge contraction, surface properties, discontinuity preservation

1

INTRODUCTION

Many applications in computer graphics and visualization can benefit from automatic simplification of complex polygonal models.
Such models are usually not only geometrically complex, but they
may also have various surface properties such as colors, textures,and surface normals. Scanning and acquisition methods often produce surface meshes that are much more dense than actually required for the intended application. Computer games and distributed virtual environments must often operate on systems whererendering and transmission capacity is highly constrained andtherefore require strict control over the level of detail used in models. Realistic simulation systems typically have object databasesthat far exceed the capacity of even the most powerful graphics
workstations.
In recent years, a variety of surface simplification algorithms
have been developed. Among these, our algorithm, based on iterative edge contraction and quadric error metrics, provides a solution
which is a practical mixture of efficiency and quality. In this paper,
we present a generalization of the basic error metric developed in
our previous paper [6] that is capable of simplifying surfaces withvertex properties such as color and texture.

2

BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORKIn this paper, we are primarily concerned with the problem ofpolygonal surface simplification. Given an initial triangulated surface, we want to generate a simplified model that, as much as possible, faithfully reproduces the features of the original.
An assortment of simplification algorithms have been proposedin recent years. Most of those which are applicable to arbitrary 3D
surfaces can be broadly classified into 3 categories. Vertex clustering methods [17] spatially partition vertices and unify vertices
within the same cluster. They are generally very fast and work on
arbitrary collections of triangles, but can often produce relatively∗ garland@cs.cmu.edu; http://www.cs.cmu.edu/∼garland/; Computer Science Dept., Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
† ph@cs.cmu.edu; http://www.cs.cmu.edu/∼ph/poor results. Vertex decimation algorithms [18] select unimportant vertices (based on local shape heuristics), remove them, andretriangulate the resulting holes. These methods tend to produce
fair results and are reasonably efficient. Iterative edge contraction[6, 7, 8, 15, 16] has been widely used. Edges are ranked according to their cost, which is typically the amount of error introduced
into the model as a result of contracting the edge. At each iteration the lowest-cost edge is contracted and the costs of neighboring edges are updated. The primary difference between the various contraction-based methods is the error metric used for ranking
edges. These algorithms generally produce good results, althoughrunning time varies greatly between methods. Iterative edge contraction is also particularly attractive because it naturally leads to a
useful multiresolution model representation [8, 9, 19].
There has been comparatively less work done on simplifying
models with material properties. For restricted surface classes,
such as height fields [5], very simple methods can work quite well.
However, more general surfaces require more advanced techniques.
Hoppe [8] explicitly included attributes in his error metric. Certain
et al. [1] discussed adding surface color to a wavelet-based multiresolution framework, and Hughes et al. [10] investigated the simplification of Gouraud-shaded meshes produced by radiosity simulations. Cohen et al. [2] developed an algorithm capable of reparameterizing texture maps as a surface is simplified.
In this paper, we begin by restating our basic algorithm [6] andnext provide an expanded analysis of its behavior. We then present
the generalization of our quadric error metric to handle vertex attributes, and finish with discussion, results, and summary of ourwork.

3 FUNDAMENTAL ALGORITHM
Our algorithm, originally developed in [6], belongs to the class ofiterative edge contraction methods. Every edge is assigned a cost,
namely the error resulting from its contraction. To efficiently track
the lowest-cost edge, we maintain all edges in a heap keyed on cost.
At each iteration, we can extract the lowest-cost edge and contract
it. Our error metric offers a compromise between very fast lowquality methods and very slow high-quality methods. Moreover, it
provides a useful characterization of the local shape and error of thecurrent approximation.
The fundamental operation of our algorithm is edge contraction,
which we will write (v1 , v2 ) → v̄. To perform this simple con-traction, we need to perform the following three steps: (1) movevertices v1 and v2 to the position v̄, (2) replace all occurrences of v2
with v1 , and (3) delete v2 and any degenerate faces. Figure 1 illustrates the effect of a single edge contraction. As has been recently
observed [6, 15], we can just as easily consider the contraction of
any arbitrary pair of vertices. However, we will not consider thecase of non-edge pairs in this paper. Our experience has shown
that, while greedy edge contraction produces consistently good results on many kinds of models, greedy contraction of arbitrary pairs
is not as robust and does not perform as consistently.

3.1 Basic Quadric Error MetricWe characterize the geometric error of an approximation using themetric described in our previous paper [6] which is based on themetric of Ronfard and Rossignac [16]. Conceptually, we associate
a set of planes with every vertex of the model. The error at thatvertex is defined to be the sum of squared distances of the vertex toall the planes in its set. Each set is initialized with the faces incident
to the corresponding vertex in the original model. When an edge iscontracted into a single vertex, the resulting set is the union of thetwo sets associated with the endpoints.
However, these “sets” are purely conceptual; we do not represent
them explicitly. Each face in the original model defines a plane
which satisfies the equation1 nT v + d = 0, where n = [n x n y nz ]T isa unit normal and d is a constant. The squared distance of a vertex
v = [x y z]T to this plane is given by
D2 = (nT v + d)2 = (vT n + d)(nT v + d) = vT (nnT )v + 2dnT v + d 2 .
This is a quadratic form, plus a linear term, plus a constant. We canconveniently represent D2 using the quadric Q:
Q = (A, b, c) = (nnT , dn, d 2 )Q(v) = vT Av + 2bT v + c.
This requires 10 coefficients to store the symmetric 3×3 matrix A,
the 3-vector b, and the scalar c.
The addition of quadrics can be naturally defined componentwise: Q1 (v) + Q2 (v) = (Q1 + Q2 )(v), where (Q1 + Q2 ) = (A1 +A2 , b1 + b2 , c1 + c2 ). Thus, to compute the sum of squared distances to a set of planes, we only need one quadric which is thesum of the quadrics defined by each of the individual planes. And
when contracting the edge (v1 , v2 ), the resulting quadric is merely
the sum Q = Q1 + Q2 . Furthermore, we can define the cost ofa contraction (v1 , v2 ) → v̄ as the error at v̄ which is Q(v̄) =Q1 (v̄) + Q2 (v̄).
This direct summing of quadrics can lead to the minor inaccuracyof double and triple counting [6] of the associated planes. However,
we find the simple additive structure more appealing than the more
complicated inclusion-exclusion rule [12] required to correct the
problem. Also, to simplify the presentation we have assumed thatall planes are uniformly weighted. However, in applications where
surface triangles will be of significantly varying sizes, it is useful toweight quadrics by the area of the contributing triangle.
In practice, it is also necessary to check each proposed contraction and verify that it does not cause the mesh to fold over on itself.
Previously, we suggested using a simple normal-flipping heuristic[6]. However, Edelsbrunner and Nekhayev [3] have developed amore effective procedure, as well as a technique for preventing
topological changes to the mesh. A further check that the surface remains a manifold may be required if our algorithm is implemented
using data structures that can only represent manifold surfaces.
1 By convention, we will assume that all vectors are column vectors.
Thus, nT v = n·v is the inner product of two vectors. We will generally
use the transpose notation for the elements of the quadric equation and the
dot notation elsewhere. The outer product nnT produces a 3×3 matrix.

Figure 2: Result of simplifying a bunny model. Only 1.4% of theoriginal faces remain. Centered around each vertex is an isosurfaceof the corresponding quadric.

3.2 Interpretation of Quadrics
The quadrics which we construct during simplification also possess
a useful geometric interpretation. For a particular quadric, consider
the level surface Q(v) = . This is the set of all points whose error
with respect to Q is . The resulting isosurface is a (potentially degenerate) ellipsoid; the possible degenerate forms are cylinders andparallel planes. Algebraically, A is a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix whose eigenvalues and eigenvectors define the principal
axes of the ellipsoids. Also note that, in statistical terminology, A
is the sample covariance matrix of the face normals [11].
We have also suggested that quadrics characterize the local shapeof the surface. This is apparent in Figure 2, which illustrates
the quadric isosurfaces produced by the simplification of a bunnymodel. For vertices on creases, such as on the neck and ears, the ellipsoids are cigar shaped. They are elongated in the direction of thecrease. In contrast, where the surface is less curved, such as on theforehead, the quadrics are thin and roughly circular, like pancakes.
Intuitively, we might conclude that the quadrics will be elongatedin directions of low curvature and thin in directions of high curvature. We can provide mathematical support for this conclusion.
Let us suppose that our model is actually a differentiable manifold,the limit of an infinitely fine tessellation. We have shown [4] that,
under suitable conditions, the two smallest eigenvalues of A are
proportional to the squares of the principal curvatures [14] and thecorresponding eigenvectors are the corresponding principal directions.

3.3 Vertex Placement
When considering the contraction of an edge (v1 , v2 ), we needsome way of choosing the target position v̄. There are two primary policies to choose from, and the choice between them must be
made with the intended application in mind. We must trade space
efficiency against approximation quality.
Subset placement is the simplest strategy that we can adopt. We
simply select one of the endpoints as the target position. In otherwords, we will contract one endpoint into the other. To choose
between endpoints, we merely need to find the smaller of Q(v1 )and Q(v2 ). Under this policy, any approximation which we produce
will use a subset of the original vertices in their original positions.
We can often produce better approximations using optimal
placement, which we have previously [6] recommended. For agiven quadric Q, we can try to find the point v̄ such that Q(v̄) is
minimal. Since Q(v̄) is quadratic, finding its minimum is a linear

problem; the minimum occurs where ∂Q/∂x = ∂Q/∂y = ∂Q/∂z =0. By solving this system of equations, we find that the optimal
position and its error are given by:v̄ = −A−1 b

Q(v̄) = −bT A−1 b + candGeometrically, the minimum v̄ will lie at the center of the concentric ellipsoidal isosurfaces of Q. Of course, the matrix A may not
be invertible. In other words, there may be infinitely many minimal points. This is exactly the case where the level surfaces of Q
are degenerate ellipsoids. In such circumstances, we can use subset placement as a fall-back strategy. Indeed, we can also consider
other intermediate policies such as selecting between the endpoints
and the midpoint, or we might choose to find the optimal position
along the edge.
The choice of optimal vs. subset placement depends on the intended application. Optimal placement will tend to produce approximations which fit the original more closely. The resulting meshes
also tend to be better shaped — triangles are more equilateral andtheir areas are more uniform. This is the best choice for generating fixed approximations of an original. However, if the goal is to
produce some sort of adaptive representation [8, 9, 13, 19], subset
placement may be preferable. The overall fit of the models will
be inferior, but we can save significantly on storage. With optimal placement, we must store delta records with each contraction
to encode the new vertex position. Using subset placement, we
can eliminate such overhead entirely. Since this overhead grows
linearly with the number of attributes, the space savings of subset
placement can become substantial.

3.4 Homogeneous Variant
The original description of the quadric error metric [6] used an alternate notation. We can treat the quadric Q as a homogeneous
matrix where




Q=



A
bT


b 



c

This gives us the homogeneous quadratic form Q(v) = hT Qhwhere h is the homogeneous vector [v 1]T . We have found thisless convenient than the form presented earlier because it requires
us to move back and forth between regular and homogeneous coordinates. It is also slightly less efficient because all our matrix operations must be on 4×4 rather than 3×3 matrices; this is a noticeable
difference, for example, when performing matrix inversions.

4

PRESERVING DISCONTINUITIESDiscontinuities of a model, such as creases, open boundaries, andborders between differently colored regions, are often among its
most visually significant features. Therefore, their preservation is
critical for producing quality approximations. The fundamental algorithm that we have just outlined can already handle shape discontinuities (e.g., creases), and we can easily extend it to handle
boundary curves as well.
Surface shape discontinuities (where there is only C0 continuity)
are implicitly preserved by the error metric as described. For example, consider the sharp edges of a cube. A point on the edge of acube will have contributing planes from both adjoining faces of the
cube. Since these planes are perpendicular, the cost of moving thepoint along the edge is much lower than moving it away from theedge. Consequently, the algorithm will be strongly biased against
altering the shape of these edges.

(a) Original cylinder(b) No constraints(c) Boundary constraints
Figure 3: (a) Open-ended cylinder with 7,960 faces. (b) With unconstrained boundaries, this 2,460 face approximation quickly degenerates. (c) Using boundary constraints, the shape is preserved(also 2,460 faces).

Figure 4: Sample boundary constraint plane. Every edge along theboundary defines a single constraint plane.

In contrast, the basic algorithm ignores boundary curves. Figure 3a shows a cylinder model with open boundaries at each end.
Without any modification, the basic simplification algorithm willproduce approximations such as shown in Figure 3b. This is clearly
unacceptable.
Fortunately, we can easily incorporate boundary constraints into
the existing framework. During initialization, we flag all boundary edges. For each face adjacent to a given boundary edge, we
compute a plane through the edge that is perpendicular to the face.
The perpendicular plane defines a boundary constraint plane (seeFigure 4). We can form a quadric for this plane, just as with a regular face plane. We weight the resulting quadric by a large penalty
factor, and add it into the initial quadric for each of the endpoints.
Figure 3c shows the resulting approximation when boundary constraints are enabled. It has the same number of faces as Figure 3b;
however, it is a far superior approximation because the boundaries
have been properly preserved.
Boundaries may also occur in discrete surface attributes. Consider a surface similar to the one pictured in Figure 7 where eachface would be assigned a color from a small discrete palette. Or
perhaps we have a map 4-colored by country. Each edge dividing
two faces of different colors can be marked as a boundary. This
would cause our algorithm to try to faithfully preserve the borders
between separate regions.
Naturally, there are limits to this approach. If, for instance, every
face is assigned a slightly different color, or if we have a triangulated regular grid where every other triangle is a hole, the results
will not be good. The implicit assumption is that boundaries arereasonably sparse.

5

SURFACE PROPERTIES

Many models have surface properties beyond simple geometry. In
computer graphics, the most common are surface normals, colors,
and textures. To produce approximations which faithfully represent
the original, we must maintain these properties as well as the surface geometry. Our basic error metric, based on our earlier work
[6] and restated earlier, only considers surface geometry when simplifying the model. This is an obvious shortcoming. However, we
can formulate a natural extension of the basic metric which will
incorporate surface properties defined as vertex attributes.
We will assume that each vertex, in addition to its position in
space, has some associated values which describe other properties.
As with geometric position, these values will be linearly interpolated over the faces of the model. Consequently, these properties
must be continuous; they cannot be restricted to a discrete set ofvalues. Furthermore, we will assume that distance between two
property values is measured with the usual Euclidean metric.
As an ongoing example, we will consider a Gouraud-shadedmodel for which each vertex has an associated color value [r g b]Twhere 0 ≤ r, g, b ≤ 1 (see Figure 9).
We need some way to measure errors when surfaces have properties. One natural approach is to use a segregated error metric whichmeasures errors in each attribute separately. This bears some resemblance to Hoppe’s [8] energy function, which has separate terms for
spatial and scalar attributes. Using our quadric-based algorithm, we
could assign a separate quadric to each attribute. In this case, thestorage cost of the quadrics would grow linearly with the number of
attributes. For our colored surface example, we could measure erroras Q(vpos ) + R(vrgb ) using separate quadrics Q and R for position(vpos = [x y z]T ) and color (vrgb = [r g b]T ), respectively. This will
work acceptably with a subset placement policy, because the points
we are choosing from (i.e., the two endpoints) are both known to bevalid points on the surface. However, this approach will not work
well at all with optimal placement because this simple error formula does not account for the cross correlation between positionand color.
When using optimal placement, we allow vertex positions tomove freely so as to achieve better surface approximations. The
simplest scheme for maintaining attribute values would be to simply copy the attributes of v1 to v̄, but this fails quite noticeably (seeFigure 10b). On the other hand, if the optimal position was constrained to lie along the edge, we could simply interpolate attributes
along the edge. However, the optimal positions will, in general, lienear the original surface, but not on it. Consequently, we cannot
simply interpolate the property values of the endpoints; we needsome way to synthesize entirely new values based on the new position. To do this, we use higher dimensional quadrics whose extra
coefficients will implicitly encode the cross correlation between thevarious properties.
We will treat each vertex as a vector v ∈ Rn . The first 3
components of v will be spatial coordinates, and the remaining
components will be property values. In the case of our coloredmodel, n = 6, and we would use 6-dimensional vectors of the form
[x y z r g b]T . For consistent results, the model can be scaled sothat it lies within the unit cube in Rn . This ensures that the various
properties (including position) have the same scale.

r

e2
e1
p

Figure 5: Orthonormal vectors e1 and e2 define a local frame, withorigin p, for the 2-plane defined by the triangle (p, q, r).

in Rn . Given this, we can construct a quadric that will measure thesquared distance of any point in Rn to this plane.
To derive the n-dimensional quadric for the 2-plane containing
T, we begin by computing two orthonormal unit vectors e1 and e2
which lie in the plane. Figure 5 shows a pictorial representation ofthese vectors. They are defined by the equations:
e1 =
e2 =

q−p
kq − pk

r − p − (e1 ·(r − p))e1.
kr − p − (e1 ·(r − p))e1 k

This gives us two unit-length vectors which form two axes of a
local frame with p as the origin. In principle, we could compute an
entire local frame with axes e1 , . . . , en . However, in order to compute distances to the 2-plane of T, we will only need to explicitly
represent the axes in the plane; for the rest, it is enough to knowthat they exist and that they are all perpendicular to the plane inquestion.
Now, consider an arbitrary point v ∈ Rn . We are interested in thesquared distance D2 of v from the plane of T. Let u = p − v; thesquared length of u can be decomposed as
kuk2 = (u·e1 )2 + · · · + (u·en )2 ,which we can rewrite as(u·e3 )2 + · · · + (u·en )2 = kuk2 − (u·e1 )2 − (u·e2 )2 .
Note that the left hand side is the squared length of u along all components perpendicular to the plane of T, in other words, the squared
perpendicular distance of v to the plane of T. This is precisely the
distance we are interested in:D2==

kuk2 − (uT e1 )2 − (uT e2 )2uT u − (uT e1 )(e1 T u) − (uT e2 )(e2 T u).

By expanding and collecting terms, we arrive at the following formula:
D2=

5.1 Generalized Error Metric
Having placed our vertices in n-dimensional space, we can formulate an extended version of our quadric error metric. Consider the
triangle T = (p, q, r). For our example of a colored surface, wewould have p = [p x p y pz pr p g pb ]T and so forth. Since we haveassumed that all properties are linearly interpolated over triangles,
these three n-dimensional points determine a 2-dimensional planeqvT v − 2pT v + p·p−vT (e1 e1 T )v + 2(p·e1 )e1 T v − (p·e1 )2−vT (e2 e2 T )v + 2(p·e2 )e2 T v − (p·e2 )2 ,which has the structure of our quadric metric. We can rewrite it as
D2 = vT Av + 2bT v + c where:
A
b
c

=
=
=

I − e1 e1 T − e2 e2 T
(p·e1 )e1 + (p·e2 )e2 − p
p·p − (p·e1 )2 − (p·e2 )2 .

[1 2 0 .3 .4 .3][0 1 0 .5 .3 .3][2 2 0 .3 .5 .3][1 1 0 .5 .4 .3][2 1 0 .5 .5 .3][0 0 0 .7 .3 .3][1 0 0 .7 .4 .3]

common cases as follows:model typevertexA

geometry only

[x y z]T

3×3

geometry + 2D
texturegeom + color[x y z s t]T

5×5[x y z r g b]T

6×6[x y z a b c]T

6×6(Gouraud)



0.06
0
 0
0.23

 0
0
A=
1.15
 0
 −0.59
0
0
0

0
0
0
1.15
6.00
0
0
5.77
0
0
0
0


−0.59
0
0
0 

0
0 

0
0 
5.94
0 
0
6.00

Figure 6: At top is a simple mesh, of 6 triangles, with xyzrgb values
at each vertex (rgb values in italic type). Summing quadrics foreach face yields the matrix A shown.

In this generalized quadric, A is an n ×n matrix, and b is an nvector.
In Figure 6, we can see a simple example of how xyzrgb quadrics
work. On top is the 6 triangle neighborhood of the central vertex.
Each vertex is labeled with its xyzrgb coordinates. Note that r coordinate is highly correlated with y and that g is highly correlatedwith x. Below the mesh, we see the matrix A for the initial quadricassociated with the central vertex. It is computed by summing thequadrics for the 6 surrounding faces. By examining the non-zero
off-diagonal elements, we can see how the quadric records the highcorrelation between r & y and between g & x.
Because our generalized quadric error metric has exactly thesame structure as before, we can substitute it into our fundamental algorithm very easily. We have changed the way quadrics areconstructed from initial triangles, but we use them in an identicalmanner. In particular, we can use the same simple formulas forfinding the optimal target of a contraction.

6

DISCUSSION

This generalized metric allows us to continue to use our optimal
placement policy. It provides a means to synthesize new property
values at vertex positions which do not lie anywhere on the original surface. Since, in most cases, our algorithm produces the best
quality approximations using optimal placement, this is a significant advantage.
Unfortunately, for every property, we must add extra dimensions
to the vertices and quadrics. Consequently, as we add more andmore properties to a surface, the size of the quadric matrix grows
quadratically in the size of the attributes, and the running time will
also increase. We can summarize the space requirements for a few

geometrynormals+# uniquecoefficients

5
= 10
2

7
= 21
2

8
2 = 28
8= 28
2

However, this overhead is not extreme. For instance, we have run
tests on models with both color and surface normals at every vertex;
this requires 9-dimensional quadrics. A 30,000 face model can still
be simplified in under 30 seconds on a PentiumPro 200 system.
We must also be able to deal with constraints on the range ofproperty values. RGB colors, for instance, must be kept within
the color cube. While our algorithm will not generate colors far
outside the cube, since they would very poorly fit the data, it may
generate colors that are slightly below 0 or above 1. In such cases,
we merely clamp the offending colors to the nearest point on thecolor cube. Since only small distances are involved, this should
not introduce any appreciable artifacts. The same caution must be
applied to texture coordinates. For surface normals, we need torescale the resulting vectors to have unit length.
In our presentation of the generalized error metric, we haveweighted all vertex attributes equally. However, for optimal results
one might wish to selectively weight certain attributes more thanothers. It seems doubtful that there is a single optimal weighting
for a given set of attributes, but it can easily be offered as a userselectable preference.
A prime application of our algorithm is the simplification ofGouraud-shaded meshes produced by radiosity simulations. Eventhe simplest geometries are often carved up into very small polygons to achieve high-quality shading. The resulting surfaces areripe for simplification; typically, the surface geometry is heavily
over-sampled and the colors vary smoothly over large areas.

6.1 Attribute Continuity
We have assumed that property values vary continuously over thesurface, but in practice, this is not always the case. For example,
consider simply wrapping a texture around a cylinder. There will
be a seam where s wraps from 0 to 1. Consequently, every vertex
along this seam must have two separate texture coordinates, andthis will introduce a discontinuity at every one of these vertices.
To represent and simplify this textured cylinder with our current
algorithm, we would need to replicate each vertex along the seam;each copy would have separate texture coordinates but identical positions. In other words, we must force the surface to be a topologicalplane rather than a cylinder. Using boundary constraints to maintainthe seam, this might produce acceptable results.
However, this will not work for all cases. A model might conceivably have a distinct piece of texture for each face, and thiswould create a discontinuity at every edge. As mentioned in Section
4, the algorithm does not work well when constraints proliferate tothis extent. A more complete solution would require that we allow
multiple values for each property at each vertex. To apply our simplification algorithm, we would need to create multiple corresponding quadrics for each vertex. While we have not yet implemented
this approach, we believe it would work well.

6.2 Euclidean Attributes
We have also assumed that the metric for measuring the difference
in attributes is Euclidean. More specifically, we have assumed that
attribute values at the vertices will be linearly interpolated over thefaces of the model.
Perceptual color spaces are not Euclidean in RGB. However, we
expect that the approximations produced by our algorithm will be
displayed as Gouraud-shaded surfaces. Consequently, for display,colors will be linearly interpolated over faces. Thus, regardless ofthe non-Euclidean nature of RGB color space, our assumptions coincide with the way the results will be displayed.
Surface normals are another attribute type which might not seemto conform with our Euclidean assumptions. However, we contend that our algorithm will typically treat normals appropriately.
Consider the Gauss mapping of the surface, where every vertex ismapped to the point on the unit sphere corresponding to the unit
surface normal at that vertex. Simplifying surface normals as partof our generalized quadric metric is essentially equivalent to simplifying this spherical surface with the basic algorithm. So, as longas normals don’t change too rapidly, our extended algorithm willproduce good surface normals.

7

RESULTS

Figures 8a–e illustrate the performance of the fundamental algorithm on a very complex surface which is purely geometric. The
original model contains 1,085,634 faces; the approximations shown
contain 20,000 and 1,000 faces. Producing these approximations
might require hours with some algorithms. However, on a PentiumPro 200 system, the running time of our algorithm was 46
seconds for initialization (constructing initial quadrics and ordering edges in a heap)2 and 130 seconds for the actual simplification.
During execution, the total memory used was roughly 200MB, ofwhich 40MB were required to store the quadrics at each vertex (using 10 doubles each). The initial surface mesh is really very
dense; the approximation shown in Figure 8b uses only about 2% of
the original number of triangles yet preserves almost all of the surface features. In Figure 8d we see a very simple 1,000 face (0.01%)
approximation. Most of the detail of the surface, such as the necklace and facial features, have been removed. However, the basic
shape of the object is still faithfully preserved and, at very low resolutions, would be a suitable replacement.

7.1 Color
Figure 7 is a simple demonstration of our algorithm using 6-D
xyzrgb quadrics. The original surface on the left is a piece of asphere Gouraud-shaded with a swirl pattern; it also has an open
boundary. The approximation is about 5% the size of the original. Notice that the structure of the mesh conforms closely to thecolor pattern. The mesh is fairly sparse in areas of constant color.
Near the borders of the color pattern, not only is the triangle density higher, but the edges are properly aligned with the curve of theswirl pattern.
A more challenging Gouraud-shaded example is shown in Figure 9. The surface itself is a sphere built from points on a latitudelongitude grid. Each vertex is assigned a color based on the elevation of the Earth’s surface at that point. Since it is so simple, thesurface shape is preserved very accurately. More importantly, thecoloring of the surface is also preserved well. Note that larger triangles appear in areas of constant or linear color variation, such as
oceans, while smaller triangles occur along the coastlines.
2 We have excluded the time required to read and write files to disk sincethese vary significantly based on the format used.

Figure 7: At left: a curved surface (18,050 faces) with colors at
each vertex. At right: 1,000 face approximation. Notice that meshedges follow the color contours.

7.2 Texture
Our extended algorithm can just as easily be used to simplify surfaces with texture maps. In Figure 10a, we are looking down at asquare height field of the eastern half of North America. The surface is textured with a satellite photograph with height given byaltitude and bathymetric data.
Figure 10b shows the result of simplifying this surface using optimal placement without regard for the texture coordinates. For
each contraction, we simply propagate the texture coordinates ofv1 . As we would expect, this produces very poor results. Moving
vertices without synthesizing correct texture coordinates causes the
texture to warp like a rubber sheet. For example, note the substantial distortion around Florida and New England.
In contrast, the approximation shown in Figure 10c, with thesame number of faces, was produced using an xyzst extended
quadric. The algorithm produces nearly the same geometric surface
as before. However, by using the extended metric, we have allowed
the algorithm to synthesize appropriate texture coordinates for the
new vertices. Unlike colored surfaces (such as Figure 7), the edgesof the mesh do not align with features in the texture. The simplification algorithm never accesses the pixels of the texture; it merely
tries to update texture coordinates so that the texture is mapped onto
the surface in the same way as it was originally.
In the example of Figure 10, there is a direct correspondence
between (x, y) and (s, t). This would provide an alternate way tosynthesize new texture coordinates: for any vertex position, we canuse x and y to compute appropriate s and t values. However, ourextended algorithm provides a much more general solution.

8 SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK
Our algorithm can quickly produce good quality approximationsof polygonal surface models. It is one of the fastest algorithms
available for producing quality approximations. The fundamental
algorithm works well for purely geometric surfaces [6]. In this paper, we have explored our original algorithm further. We have provided more detailed analysis of the nature of quadrics, and we havedemonstrated that it is capable of simplifying models of reasonably
high complexity. Our original algorithm was limited to surfaces
without surface properties such as color and texture. In this paper,
we have presented a new generalized error metric, which substantially expands the set of models which can be simplified using ouralgorithm. As we have shown, it is capable of rapidly producing
quality approximations that preserve both surface shape and associated surface properties.
There are certainly further improvements that could be made tothe algorithm we have outlined here. A more complete system
would also include support for multiple attribute values per vertex.
This would, for instance, help solve the problems posed by texture
seams and by surface normal discontinuities. We also believe thatthe memory usage of our implementation could be reduced.
Related information and a prototype implementation of our basic
algorithm can be found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/∼garland/quadrics/.

9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Konrad Polthier for the interesting discussion of relating the quadric error metric and differential geometry.
Thanks also to the Stanford Graphics Lab for making the modelsof the Buddha statue and the bunny available3. The model of the
Earth is based on an image of the ETOPO5 Earth elevation dataset
provided by the USGS4 . This research was supported under NSF
grants CCR-9357763 & CCR-9619853 and by the Schlumberger
Foundation.

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Figure 8: Simplifying geometry only: A very complex model of 1,085,634 faces (a) is simplified to 20,000 faces (b–c) and 1,000 faces (d–e).

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Figure 9: Simplifying geometry & color: A Gouraud-shaded surface of 73,728 faces (a) is reduced to 20,000 faces (b) and 3,000 faces (c–d).

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Figure 10: Geometry & texture: A 3,872 face model (a) reduced to 53 faces without (b) and with (c) updating texture coordinates.