TFAN: A low complexity 3D mesh compression algorithm

This paper proposes a novel approach for mono-resolution 3D mesh compression, called TFAN (Triangle Tan-based compression). TFAN treats in a unified manner meshes of arbitrary topologies, i.e., manifold or not, oriented or not, while offering a linear computational complexity (with respect to the number of mesh vertices) for both encoding and decoding algorithms. In addition, the TFAN compressed representation is optimized for real-time decoding applications. In order to validate the proposed approach, two databases have been considered for experimentations. The first is the MPEG-4 test set, which includes over 3500 general purpose manifold meshes. The second, related to the Trench national project SEMANTIC-3D, includes over 4000 computer assisted design (CAD) meshes of highly irregular, non-manifold topologies. In both cases, the TFAN approach outperforms existing techniques such as MPEG-4/3DMC (3D Mesh Coding) or Touma and Gotsman, with decoding times lower by an order of magnitude at equivalent or even better levels of compression efficiency (±10% in bitrate). In addition, when applied to non-manifold 3D data, the compression performances are significantly enhanced (6-30% gain in bitrate). Due to its high compression performances the TFAN approach has been recently retained for ISO standardization, within the framework of the MPEG-4/AFX standard.