Polygon Mesh - Other Representations

Other Representations

Streaming meshes store faces in an ordered, yet independent, way so that the mesh can be transmitted in pieces. The order of faces may be spatial, spectral, or based on other properties of the mesh. Streaming meshes allow a very large mesh to be rendered even while it is still being loaded.

Progressive meshes transmit the vertex and face data with increasing levels of detail. Unlike streaming meshes, progressive meshes give the overall shape of the entire object, but at a low level of detail. Additional data, new edges and faces, progressively increase the detail of the mesh.

Normal meshes transmit progressive changes to a mesh as a set of normal displacements from a base mesh. With this technique, a series of textures represent the desired incremental modifications. Normal meshes are compact, since only a single scalar value is needed to express displacement. However, the technique requires a complex series of transformations to create the displacement textures.