Consistent normal orientation for polygonal meshes
Pavel Borodin, Gabriel Zachmann, Reinhard Klein · 2004
In this paper, we propose a new method that can consistently orient all normals of any mesh (if at all possible), while ensuring that most polygons are seen with their front-faces from most viewpoints. Our algorithm combines the proximity-based with a new visibility-based approach. Thus, it virtually eliminates the problems of proximitybased approaches, while avoiding the limitations of previous solid-based approaches. Our new method builds a connectivity graph of the patches of the model, which encodes the “proximity ” of neighboring patches. In addition, it augments this graph with two visibility coefficients for each patch. Based on this graph, a global consistent orientation of all patches is quickly found by a greedy optimization. We have tested our new method with a large suite of models, many of which from the automotive industry. The results show that almost all models can be oriented consistently and sensibly using our new algorithm. 1.