TFAN: A low complexity 3D mesh compression algorithm

Abstract This paper proposes a novel approach for mono‐resolution 3D mesh compression, called TFAN (Triangle Fan‐based compression). TFAN treats in a unified manner meshes of arbitrary topologies, i.e., manifold or not, oriented or not, while offering a linear computational complexity (with respect to the number of mesh vertices) for both encoding and decoding algorithms. In addition, the TFAN compressed representation is optimized for real‐time decoding applications. In order to validate the proposed approach, two databases have been considered for experimentations. The first is the MPEG‐4 test set, which includes over 3500 general purpose manifold meshes. The second, related to the French national project SEMANTIC‐3D, includes over 4000 computer assisted design (CAD) meshes of highly irregular, non‐manifold topologies. In both cases, the TFAN approach outperforms existing techniques such as MPEG‐4/3DMC (3D Mesh Coding) or Touma and Gotsman, with decoding times lower by an order of magnitude at equivalent or even better levels of compression efficiency (±10% in bitrate). In addition, when applied to non‐manifold 3D data, the compression performances are significantly enhanced (6–30% gain in bitrate). Due to its high compression performances the TFAN approach has been recently retained for ISO standardization, within the framework of the MPEG‐4/AFX standard. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.