Abstract—The properties of the human visual system are taken into account, along with the geometric aspects of an object, in a new surface remeshing algorithm and a new mesh simplification algorithm. Both algorithms have a preprocessing step and are followed by the remeshing or mesh simplification steps. The preprocessing step computes an importance map that indicates the visual masking potential of the visual patterns on the surface. The importance map is then used to guide the remeshing or mesh simplification algorithms. Two different methods are proposed for computing an importance map that indicates the masking potential of the visual patterns on the surface. The first one is based on the Sarnoff visual discrimination metric, and the second one is inspired by the visual masking tool available in the current JPEG2000 standard. Given an importance map, the surface remeshing algorithm automatically distributes few samples to surface regions with strong visual masking properties due to surface texturing, lighting variations, bump mapping, surface reflectance, and interreflections. Similarly, the mesh simplification algorithm simplifies more aggressively where the light field of an object can hide more geometric artifacts. Index Terms—Perceptually guided rendering, visual masking, visual perception, surface remeshing, simplification, level of detail. Ç

We present a quasi-continuous level of detail method that is based on an image error metric to minimize the visual error. The method is designed for objects of high geometric complexity such as trees. By successive simplifications, it constructs a level of detail hierarchy of unconnected primitives (ellipsoids, lines) to approximate the input models at increasingly coarser levels. The hierarchy is constructed automatically without manual intervention. When rendering roughly 100k model instances at a low visual error compared to rendering the full resolution model, our method is two times faster than billboard clouds. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation- Display algorithms I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques- Graphics data structures and data types 1.