 Subdivision surfaces in computer graphics use subdivision rules to refine a surface to any given level of precision . These subdivision surfaces ( such as the Catmull @-@ Clark subdivision surface ) take a polygon mesh ( the kind used in 3D animated movies ) and refines it to a mesh with more polygons by adding and shifting points according to different recursive formulas . Although many points get shifted in this process , each new mesh is <unk> a subdivision of the old mesh ( meaning that for every edge and vertex of the old mesh , you can identify a corresponding edge and vertex in the new one , plus several more edges and vertices ) . 
