Efficient edge-aware surface mesh reconstruction for urban scenes

We propose an efficient approach for building compact, edge-preserving, view-centric triangle meshes from either dense or sparse depth data, with a focus on modeling architecture in large-scale urban scenes. Our method constructs a 2D base mesh from a preliminary view partitioning, then lifts the base mesh into 3D in a fast vertex depth optimization. Different view partitioning schemes are proposed for imagery and dense depth maps. They guarantee that mesh edges are aligned with crease edges and discontinuities. In particular, we introduce an effective plane merging procedure with a global error guarantee in order to maximally compact the resulting models. Moreover, different strategies for detecting and handling discontinuities are presented. We demonstrate that our approach provides an excellent trade-off between quality and compactness, and is eligible for fast production of polyhedral building models from large-scale urban height maps, as well as, for direct meshing of sparse street-side Structure-from-Motion (SfM) data.