Superfaces: polyhedral approximation with bounded error
Alan D. Kalvin, Russell H. Taylor · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1994
We describe superfaces, a new method for simplifying closed polyhedra. The superfaces algorithm performs the simplification based on a bounded approximation criterion that produces a simplified polyhedron that approximates the original one to within a prespecified tolerance. The vertices in the simplified polyhedron are a proper subset of the original vertices, so the algorithm is well-suited for creating hierarchical representations of polyhedra.