A Multiresolution Approach to Render 3D Models

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Ramos, Francisco^; | Chover, Miguel | Ripolles, Oscar

Affiliations: Universitat Jaume I, Dept. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informaticos, 12071 Castellon, Spain, e-mail: francisco.ramos@uji.es, chover@uji.es | Neuroelectrics, 08022 Barcelona, Spain, e-mail: oscar.ripolles@neuroelectrics.com

Note: [] Corresponding author.

Abstract: Image synthesis techniques are present in a wide range of applications as they leverage the amount of information required for creating realistic visualizations. For fast hardware rendering they usually employ a triangle-based representation describing the geometry of the scene. In this paper, we introduce a new and simple framework for performing on-the-fly refinement and simplification of meshes completely on the GPU. As we aim at making easy the integration of level-of-detail management into the creation workflow of artists, the presented method is easy to be implemented. We only need a coarse mesh, its displacement map and a geometry shader. At rendering time, we employ a geometry shader to parallelize the tessellation and displacement steps. The tessellation step performs uniform refinement or simplification operations by applying a fixed subdivision criterion. Our method also exploits coherence by taking advantage of the last computed mesh. We provide a method which offers a flexible integration with standard 3D tools, easy to be implemented, coherence exploitation and wholly processed by the GPU.

Keywords: GPU, mesh refinement, shader, visualization

Journal: Informatica, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 603-618, 2013