Abstract
We describe a efficient surface reconstruction method that reconstructs a 3D manifold polygonal mesh approximately passing through a set of 3D oriented points. Our algorithm includes 3D convex hull, octree data structure, signed distance function (SDF), and marching cubes. The 3D convex hull provides us with a fast computation of SDF, octree structure allows us to compute a minimal distance for SDF, and marching cubes lead to iso-surface generation with SDF. Our approach gives us flexibility in the choice of the resolution of the reconstructed surface, and it also enables to use on low-level PCs with minimal peak memory usage. Experimenting with publicly available scan data shows that we can reconstruct a polygonal mesh from point cloud of sizes varying from 10,000 ~ 1,000,000 in about 1~60 seconds.