This project is an implementation of the Hugues Hoppe's seminal 1996 paper Progressive Meshes. In addition, I have implemented Michael Garland & Paul S. Heckbert's 1997 paper Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics to yield more high-quality mesh decimation.
All dependencies are included as submodules in the repo. Only CMake, OpenGL, and a C++11 compatible compiler are needed.
Run the executable bin/ProgressiveMeshes from the project root.
See my blog for detailed explanation.