Point-based rendering techniques

The increasing popularity of points as rendering primitives has led to a variety of different rendering algorithms, and the different implementations compare like apples to oranges. In this paper, we revisit and compare a number of recently developed point-based rendering implementations within a common testbed. Also we briefly summarize a few proposed hierarchical multiresolution point data structures and discuss their advantages. Based on a common view-dependent level-of-detail (LOD) rendering framework, we then examine different hardware accelerated point rendering algorithms. Experimental results are given with respect to performance timing and rendering quality for the different approaches. Additionally, we also compare the point-based rendering techniques to a basic triangle mesh approach.     

基于点的计算机图形学研究与进展

基于点的图形学是计算机图形学中一个新的研究领域,它为解决大量三维采样数据的快速绘制处理提供了一条新的途径.从点模型数字几何处理流程出发,详细分析了点模型数字几何处理流程各阶段新的进展,并对相应的     

点绘制技术的研究

对于形状复杂且不规则的物体,点绘制能实现高的绘制效率,还能获得高质量的绘制效果。该文讨论了点绘制方法的基本原理和基本绘制管道以及点绘制方法的硬件实现,并对今后研究和发展的方向进行了展望。     

Interactive modeling of implicit surfaces using a direct visualization approach with signed distance functions

Modeling appealing virtual scenes is an elaborate and time-consuming task, requiring not only training and experience, but also powerful modeling tools providing the desired functionality to the user. In this paper, we describe a modeling approach using signed distance functions as an underlying representation for objects, handling both conventional and complex surface manipulations. Scenes defined by signed distance functions can be stored compactly and rendered directly in real-time using sphere tracing. Hence, we are capable of providing an interactive application with immediate visual feedback for the artist, which is a crucial factor for the modeling process. Moreover, dealing with underlying mathematical operations is not necessary on the user level. We show that fundamental aspects of traditional modeling can be directly transferred to this novel kind of environment, resulting in an intuitive application behavior, and describe modeling operations which naturally benefit from implicit representations. We show modeling examples where signed distance functions are superior to explicit representations, but discuss the limitations of this approach as well.     

Robust adaptive polygonal approximation of implicit curves

We present an algorithm for computing a robust adaptive polygonal approximation of an implicit curve in the plane. The approximation is adapted to the geometry of the curve because the length of the edges varies with the curvature of the curve. Robustness is achieved by combining interval arithmetic and automatic differentiation.     

参数曲面导矢界估计及其在曲面绘制中的应用

目的是改进参数曲面的绘制效率。采用的方法是在参数曲线导矢界的基础上，进一步提出了3次参数曲面导矢界的公式。基于这些公式，能够较好地解决了参数曲面绘制算法过程中出现的重复绘制的问题和不连续的问题，进一步提高了曲面绘制的效果和效率。     

Ray casting implicit fractal surfaces with reduced affine arithmetic

A method is presented for ray casting implicit surfaces defined by fractal combinations of procedural noise functions. The method is robust and uses affine arithmetic to bound the variation of the implicit function along a ray. The method is also efficient due to a modification in the affine arithmetic representation that introduces a condensation step at the end of every non-affine operation. We show that our method is able to retain the tight estimation capabilities of affine arithmetic for ray casting implicit surfaces made from procedural noise functions while being faster to compute and more efficient to store.     

Shape and tone depiction for implicit surfaces

We present techniques for rendering implicit surfaces in different pen-and-ink styles. The implicit models are rendered using point-based primitives to depict shape and tone using silhouettes with hidden-line attenuation, drawing directions, and stippling. We present sample renderings obtained for a variety of models. Furthermore, we describe simple and novel methods to control point placement and rendering style. Our approach is implemented using HRBF Implicits, a simple and compact representation, that has three fundamental qualities: a small number of point-normal samples as input for surface reconstruction, good projection of points near the surface, and smoothness of the gradient field. These qualities of HRBF Implicits are used to generate a robust distribution of points to position the drawing primitives.     

Interactive rendering of NURBS surfaces

NURBS (Non-uniform rational B-splines) surfaces are one of the most useful primitives employed for high quality modeling in CAD/CAM tools and graphics software. Since direct evaluation of NURBS surfaces on the GPU is a highly complex task, the usual approach for rendering NURBS is to perform the conversion into Bézier surfaces on the CPU, and then evaluate and tessellate them on the GPU. In this paper we present a new proposal for rendering NURBS surfaces directly on the GPU in order to achieve interactive and real-time rendering. Our proposal, Rendering Pipeline for NURBS Surfaces (RPNS), is based on a new primitive KSQuad that uses a regular and flexible processing of NURBS surfaces, while maintaining their main geometric properties to achieve real-time rendering. RPNS performs an efficient adaptive discretization to fine tune the density of primitives needed to avoid cracks and holes in the final image, applying an efficient non-recursive evaluation of the basis function on the GPU. An implementation of RPNS using current GPUs is presented, achieving real-time rendering rates of complex parametric models. Our experimental tests show a performance several orders of magnitude higher than traditional approximations based on NURBS to Bézier conversion.     

Isotopic meshing of implicit surfaces

Implicit surfaces are given as the zero set of a function F:ℝ³→ℝ. Although several algorithms exist for generating piecewise linear approximations, most of these are based on a user-defined stepsize or bounds to indicate the precision, and therefore cannot guarantee topological correctness. Interval arithmetic provides a mechanism to determine global properties of the implicit function. In this paper we present an algorithm that uses these properties to generate a piecewise linear approximation of implicit curves and surfaces, that is isotopic to the curve or surface itself. The algorithm is simple and fast, and is among the first to guarantee isotopy for implicit surface meshing.     

GPU-based rendering of point-sampled water surfaces

Particle-based simulations are widely used to simulate fluids. We present a real-time rendering method for the results of particle-based simulations of water. Traditional approaches to visualize the results of particle-based simulations construct water surfaces that are usually represented by polygons. To construct water surfaces from the results of particle-based simulations, a density function is assigned to each particle and a density field is computed by accumulating the values of the density functions of all particles. However, the computation of the density field is time consuming. To address this problem, we propose an efficient calculation of density field using a graphics processing unit (GPU). We present a rendering method for water surfaces sampled by points. The use of the GPU permits efficient simulation of optical effects, such as refraction, reflection, and caustics.     

Parallel rendering of fractal surfaces

Fractal surfaces are a sueful modeling technique for terrain in computer graphics. Although an algorithm exists for ray tracing (Mandelbrot) fractal surfaces, the technique is computationally very expensive. The large degree of parallelism inherent in the problem suggests the use of parallel architectures for generating these images. We describe a parallel rendering algorithm for shared memory MIMD machines which takes advantage of image coherence to reduce computation. This algorithm has, on a Sequent Balance 2100 with 20 processors, demonstrated a near-linear speedup. We examine the possible synchronization bottlenecks by statically assigning different numbers of CPUs to sections of the screen.This work was supported in part by DARPA under contract MDA903-86-C-0182.     

多尺度粗糙表面的实时绘制方法

目的 大部分材质表面都具有一定的细微结构,而这些细微结构的存在增加了真实感图形绘制的复杂性.方法 首先将材质表面的细微结构分为3类:宏观结构、介观结构和微观结构,并对每类结构分别建模:宏观结构采用三角面片建模,介观结构则采用法向图表示,而微观结构直接采用单一的粗糙度表达.然后针对每种结构,分别获得它们的法向分布函数(NDF),并用混合vMF分布拟合.最终屏幕空间每个像素内的法向分布用3个尺度NDF的卷积操作近似获得.此外,在处理环境光照时引入抛物面图(PM)和summed-area table(SAT),满足了动态场景的实时绘制需求.结果 实验结果表明本文方法可以在不同视点范围下生成高真实感的反射效果,并获得实时的绘制性能.结论 本文提出的实时绘制方法能够处理表面材质结构复杂的3维模型在环境光下的真实感反射效果,并支持动态光照和形变物体.     

Iso-planar interpolation for the machining of implicit surfaces

The paper presents an approach for on-line path generation and interpolation for the machining of implicit surfaces. For a given implicit surface, once the cutting plane direction and cut-in points have been selected, iso-planar tool paths and interpolated points can be calculated on-line according to the feedrate and scallop height requirements. The approach enables the tool position and orientation to be correctly calculated at each interpolated point. Validation examples are provided for the interpolation of cyclide surfaces with planar and curved boundaries.     

Topological correction of hypertextured implicit surfaces for ray casting

Hypertextures are a useful modelling tool in that they can add three-dimensional detail to the surface of otherwise smooth objects. Hypertextures can be rendered as implicit surfaces, resulting in objects with a complex but well defined boundary. However, representing a hypertexture as an implicit surface often results in many small parts being detached from the main surface, turning an object into a disconnected set. Depending on the context, this can detract from the realism in a scene, where one usually does not expect a solid object to have clouds of smaller objects floating around it. We present a topology correction technique, integrated in a ray casting algorithm for hypertextured implicit surfaces, that detects and removes all the surface components that have become disconnected from the main surface. Our method works with implicit surfaces that are C² continuous and uses Morse theory to find the critical points of the surface. The method follows the separatrix lines joining the critical points to isolate disconnected components.     

Interactive classification for pre-integrated volume rendering of high-precision volume data

The pre-integrated volume rendering technique is widely used for creating high quality images. It produces good images even though the transfer function is nonlinear. Because the size of the pre-integration lookup table is proportional to the square of data precision, the required storage and computation load steeply increase for rendering of high-precision volume data. In this paper, we propose a method that approximates the pre-integration function proportional to the data precision. Using the arithmetic mean instead of the geometric mean and storing opacity instead of extinction density, this technique reduces the size and the update time of the pre-integration lookup table so that it classifies high-precision volume data interactively. We demonstrate performance gains for typical renderings of volume datasets.     

Efficient direct rendering of deforming surfaces via shared subdivision trees

In this paper, we present a subdivision-based approach to rasterize implicit surfaces embedded in volumetric Bézier patches undergoing a nonlinear deformation. Subdividing a given patch into simpler patches to perform the surface rasterization task is numerically robust, and allows guaranteeing visual accuracy even in the presence of geometric degeneracies. However, due to its memory requirements and slow convergence rates, subdivision is challenging to be used in an interactive environment. Unlike previous methods employing subdivision, our approach is based on the idea where for a given patch only one subdivision tree is maintained and shared among pixels. Furthermore, as the geometry of the object changes from frame to frame, a flexible data structure is proposed to manage the geometrically varying Bézier patches. The resulting algorithm is general and maps well to parallel computing platforms such as CUDA. We demonstrate on a variety of representative graphics and visualization examples that our GPU scheme scales well and achieves up to real-time performance on consumer-level graphics cards by guaranteeing visual accuracy.     

Fast generation of spherical slicing surfaces for irregular volume rendering

An efficient algorithm for generating a set of concentric spherical slicing surfaces for volume rendering of irregular volume datasets is presented. Our original algorithm, which approximates volume rendering by accumulating concentric spherical slicing surfaces from back to front, generates these surfaces by means of a conventional isosurface generation algorithm. However, this causes a performance bottleneck. To solve the problem, we propose a proliferous generation of slicing surfaces from seed cells, which are automatically determined according to the extremum points of the values of distances from a viewing point. A benchmark test shows that this approach can improve the performance significantly. In addition, we compare this algorithm with a raycasting algorithm that we proposed previously, and discuss a criterion for selecting which one to use for maximizing the performance     

由点云数据重建的隐式曲面的可视化算法

针对由点云数据重建的隐式曲面提出一种新的基于粒子系统的可视化算法。首先,基于平行线束的初始化方法在隐式模型表面找到均匀分布的采样点,避免原来粒子系统中的分割-死亡过程;用共轭梯度法替代原来粒子系统中的梯度下降法作为优化算法,将每一个椭圆粒子累进移动到低能量状态,避免了较长的收敛时间和围绕最小值的摆动现象;用贪婪选择法选择能够覆盖整个曲面的且不产生空洞的活动子集;松弛过程进一步改善依赖曲率的各向异性粒子采样。本文的粒子专门为基于Splats的表示法而设计,可以直接转换为椭圆Splats而不需要任何改动。因此,本算法可以快速、高质量地绘制出复杂隐式曲面模型。     

基于平行坐标的多个体绘制参数的优化调节*

提出基于平行坐标概念的参数控制平台来对体绘制中多个参数进行优化调节的方法。参数控制平台提供了一种调节和控制绘制参数的简单而有效的界面,它能把所有相关参数组织在一个空间,并且给用户同时显示所有参数配置的一个视图。用户可以在参数控制平台记录不同的历史绘制参数,并在一个空间对不同的参数进行比较,用户还可以重组不同的优化参数以生成新的绘制。参数控制平台有效地提高了用户对多个绘制参数进行优化调节的效率。