Virtual marching cubes: simple and efficient topological simplification

The paper presents a simple and efficient algorithm for the topological simplification of 3D meshes and/or boundary models. The algorithm, called Virtual Marching Cubes (VirtMC), belongs to the class of the simplification techniques based on a space decomposition approach, i.e. the approach based on input model discretization and surface reconstruction. With respect to other methods, VirtMC's discretization phase is more efficient and accurate and the underlying voxel model is not explicitly represented, leading to an impressive memory saving. VirtMC can also be used as a filter for other geometric manipulations, to regularize the data. For example, most geometric simplification codes expect a regular manifold mesh; VirtMC can be used to convert whichever geometric input in a regular manifold mesh, ready for simplification.