This work addresses multiresolution analysis of 3D surface models. Complex models are expensive to render, transmit, and store. We are developing a method for creating multiresolution representations for meshes containing appearance attributes (colors, normals, texture coordinates,...). The overall goal is to extract the details from complex models in order to make a level of detail representation managing appearance attributes. Multiresolution representation gives rise to many applications such as filtering, smoothing, modelling and efficient visualization.