[Algorithms] CSG operations on textured meshes -- something better than CGAL?

[Jon W. <jw...@gm...>]

I have a triangle mesh composed of many submeshes with different
textures/materials. This mesh may not be a 2-manifold -- it may have open
edges. Typical game art.

I now want to create a 3mm thick shell of this mesh. As an approximation,
taking each triangle, and extrude it back along the normal of each vertex,
and union all of those generated chopped pyramids would be an approximation
of what I want. If I do literally that, and self-union the result, then
that should resolve the self-intersection problems I'll run into along
narrow sharp creases etc.

I can't find any library to do this, though. CGAL has some fairly robust
functions on NEF polyhedra, but those polyhedra don't seem to allow
parameterization (which is academic speak for texture coordinates that may
have discontinuities across edges.)

So, what are some robust CSG libraries available that work on such
game-style meshes, preserving texture coordinates?

(And actually, I don't have one such mesh; I have > 120 million such
meshes, so a by-hand or even script-the-Max-shell-modifier solution is
unlikely to work. I do have hundreds of Linux servers at my disposal,
though.)


Sincerely,

Jon Watte


--
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas
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