title: How to simply downsample a triangular mesh?
body: <p>This requirement occur when I show the surface mesh in Matlab by <a href="http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/trisurf.html" rel="nofollow"><code>trisurf</code></a>, because the mesh is dense (high-resolution) and it is rendered slowly and can not be rotated. So I am wondering there is some intuitive method to downsample the mesh while keep the basic shape ? </p>
  
  <p>Before I post the question here, I have Googled. A popular tool <a href="http://iso2mesh.sourceforge.net" rel="nofollow">iso2mesh</a>, has a similar function, <code>remeshsurf</code>.  But it firstly reconstruct the volume by the original mesh and the construct the new mesh according to the desired resolution. An important flaw, in my opinion, is that it change the original shape.</p>
  
  <p>Anyone has some idea ? The Matlab function would be the best since it is easy to be tested.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>
  
  <p>Nico</p>