Mesh Decimation Version 1.0
by Jason Reposa and Tim Garthwaite

Our initial release: January 8th, 2002 - Happy New Year!

This file is separated in three sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Installation
  3. Support


Preface:
Having published our report at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, we are uncertain
if either of us (the authors) will ever look at this code again.


1. Introduction
This archive contains the source code for our Major Qualifying Project Mesh
Decimation. Our project consists of a program, source code, and report paper.
The report is not included in this archive, but can be obtained from our
SourceForge website (see 3. Support). The report was submitted to Worcester
Polytechnic Institute (http://www.wpi.edu) in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science.

For completness, we include our report paper abstract:

Rendering a three dimensional mesh with a large number of polygons requires an
immense amount of computing power. Decimation is the concept of removing a large
number of those polygons from the mesh in order to lower the requirements that a
computer must maintain in order to render the model. Our project is the
implementation and evaluation of a computer program that uses a non-trivial
decimation algorithm to reduce the polygon count of a three dimensional mesh.


2. Installation

Included in this package is a Windows compiled binary in the Windows directory.
It is named algo.exe and must be run from the command line.

Make sure you have a C++ compiler, a working OpenGL implementation, and GLUT.

To get GLUT:
  http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/glut/index.html

To make in Linux:
  cd src
  make

  The executable is named algo and is in the src directory.

To make in Windows: (Visual C++ 6.0)
  Open src/Windows/Windows.dsw
  Press F7 or under the build menu, choose build algo.exe

  The executable is named algo.exe and is in the top level Windows directory.

This program must be run from a command line interface (CLI).

Here is the usage:

algo <filename> [action] [action-options]
        -h prints this message
        --help prints this message

<filename> The VRML file to open

[action]
        gui DEFAULT
        nogui

[nogui-options] (options for the "nogui" action)
        -o filename     the name of the VRML file to save as DEFAULT: out.wrl
        One of the following are MANDATORY:
        -p number       percent to decimate to
        -v number       vertex count to decimate to

Typical usage would be:
        algo model.wrl

Typical usage for nogui would be:
        algo model.wrl nogui -p 100 -o output.wrl


3. Support

Our website is hosted on SourceForge.net

http://meshalgorithms.sourceforge.net/

For legal terms read src/LICENSE

Any bugs can be reported on the project page:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/meshalgorithms/

We can be contacted for any other reason through email:
  jason@reposa.info
         OR
  tgarthwaite@usa.net

We hope you like our program.
Thanks, Jason and Tim