simplify

R2026b

Simplify surface mesh

Since R2022b

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    Syntax

    simplify(mesh)
    simplify(mesh,Name=Value)

    Description

    simplify(mesh) simplifies the surface mesh mesh by using quadric decimation.

    example

    simplify(mesh,Name=Value) specifies options using one or more name-value arguments. For example, SimplificationMethod="vertex-clustering" simplifies the surface mesh by using the vertex-clustering method.

    example

    Examples

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    Open Live Script

    Define mesh vertices for a surface mesh.

    vertices = [1 -1  1; 1 1 1; -1 1 1; -1 -1 1; ...
            1 -1 -1; 1 1 -1; -1 1 -1; -1 -1 -1];

    Define the mesh faces using the vertices.

    faces = [6 2 1; 1 5 6; 8 4 3; 3 7 8; 6 7 3; 3 2 6; ...
         5 1 4; 4 8 5; 4 1 2; 2 3 4; 7 6 5; 5 8 7];

    Create and display the surface mesh.

    mesh = surfaceMesh(vertices,faces);
surfaceMeshShow(mesh,Title="Original Mesh")

    Subdivide the mesh using the midpoint-split method, and display the subdivided mesh.

    numIterations = 4;
subdivide(mesh,"midpoint-split",numIterations)
surfaceMeshShow(mesh,Title="Subdivided Mesh",WireFrame=true)

    Simplify the surface mesh by using the quadric-decimation method.

     simplify(mesh,SimplificationMethod="quadric-decimation", ...
             TargetNumFaces=30)

    Remove any unreferenced vertices, and display the simplified mesh.

    removeDefects(mesh,"unreferenced-vertices")
surfaceMeshShow(mesh,Title="Simplified Mesh",WireFrame=true)

    Open Live Script

    Read a surface mesh from an STL file.

    fileName = fullfile(toolboxdir("pointcloud"),"pcdata", ...
                  "surfaceMesh","mobius.stl");
mesh = readSurfaceMesh(fileName);

    Display the surface mesh.

    surfaceMeshShow(mesh,Title="Original Mesh",WireFrame=true)

    Simplify the surface mesh by using the vertex-clustering method.

    simplify(mesh,SimplificationMethod="vertex-clustering", ...
         VoxelSize=0.15,MergeMethod="Quadric")

    Remove any unreferenced vertices, and display the simplified mesh.

    removeDefects(mesh,"unreferenced-vertices")
surfaceMeshShow(mesh,Title="Simplified Mesh",WireFrame=true)

    Input Arguments

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    Surface mesh, specified as a surfaceMesh object.

    Name-Value Arguments

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    Specify optional pairs of arguments as Name1=Value1,...,NameN=ValueN, where Name is the argument name and Value is the corresponding value. Name-value arguments must appear after other arguments, but the order of the pairs does not matter.

    Example: simplify(mesh,SimplificationMethod="vertex-clustering") simplifies the surface mesh by using the vertex-clustering method.

    Surface mesh simplification method, specified as "quadric-decimation" or "vertex-clustering". For more information on these simplification methods, see the Simplification Methods section.

    Data Types: char | string

    Number of triangular faces in the simplified mesh, specified as a positive integer. By default, the function computes this values as 0.2 times the number of faces in the input mesh.

    Note

    This argument is applicable only when you specify SimplificationMethod as "quadric-decimation".

    Data Types: single | double | int32 | uint32

    Maximum allowed error when a vertex is merged, specified as a positive scalar.

    Note

    This argument is applicable only when you specify SimplificationMethod as "quadric-decimation".

    Data Types: single | double

    Weight for the edge vertices, specified as a positive scalar. The function uses this value to preserve the mesh boundaries.

    Note

    This argument is applicable only when you specify SimplificationMethod as "quadric-decimation".

    Data Types: single | double

    Voxel size for vertex clustering, specified as a positive scalar. The function pools all the vertices within the specified voxel size to form clusters.

    Note

    This argument is applicable only when you specify SimplificationMethod as "vertex-clustering".

    Data Types: single | double

    Vertex merging method, specified as "Average" or "Quadric". When the value is specified as "Average", the function computes an average value of all vertices in a voxel. When the value is specified as "Quadric", the function minimizes the distance between the adjacent planes to merge the vertices.

    Note

    This argument is applicable only when you specify SimplificationMethod as "voxel-clustering".

    Data Types: char | string

    Limitations

    The function discards the FaceColors property of the input surfaceMesh object. The simplified mesh does not have any face colors.

    Algorithms

    Quadric decimation is a method that uses iterative contractions of vertex pairs to simplify a mesh, and maintains error approximation for all vertices using quadric matrices. The method consists of these steps.

    1. Compute quadric matrices for all vertices, and select vertex pairs to merge.

    2. Compute the contraction target vertex for each pair.

    3. Iteratively minimize the error of the target vertices to construct the simplified mesh.

    Vertex clustering is a method that uses bounding boxes to divide the mesh into voxels. The function clusters the vertices in each voxel into a single vertex and then updates the mesh faces accordingly.

    Version History

    Introduced in R2022b

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    See Also

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