Index rendering: hardware-efficient architecture for 3-D graphics in multimedia system

Real-time three-dimensional (3D) graphics is emerging rapidly in multimedia applications, but it suffers from requirements for huge computation, high bandwidth, and large buffer. In order to achieve hardware efficiency for 3D graphics rendering, we propose a novel approach named index rendering. The basic concept of index rendering is to realize a 3D rendering pipeline by using asynchronous multi-dataflows. Triangle information can be divided into several parts with each part capable of being transferred independently and asynchronously. Finally, all data are converged by the index to generate the final image. The index rendering approach can eliminate unnecessary operations in the traditional 3D graphics pipeline, the unnecessary operations are caused by the invisible pixels and triangles in the 3D scene. Previous work, deferred shading, eliminates the operations relating to invisible pixels, but it requires huge tradeoffs in bandwidth and buffer size. With index rendering, we can eliminate operations on both invisible pixels and triangles with fewer tradeoffs as compared with the deferred shading approach. The simulation and analysis results show that the index rendering approach can reduce 10%-70% of lighting operations when using the flat and Gouraud shading process and decrease 30%-95% when using Phong shading. Furthermore, it saves 70% of buffer size and 50%-70% of bandwidth compared with the deferred shading approach. The result also indicates that this approach of index rendering is especially suitable for low-cost portable rendering devices. Hence, index rendering is a hardware-efficient architecture for 3D graphics, and it makes rendering hardware more easily integrated into multimedia systems, especially system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs.     

统一渲染架构GPU图形处理量化性能模型研究

统一渲染架构GPU为图形处理提供了丰富的运算、存储资源,也对软件优化提出了更高要求。为了有效地进行性能设计和优化,针对统一渲染架构实现的GPU提出一种量化的图形处理性能模型,在深入研究统一渲染架构GPU架构和工作原理基础上,分析影响图形处理的各种因素:图形指令生成、主机接口数据传输、图形指令解析、图形处理流水数据吞吐和统一染色阵列处理能力。通过仿真验证表明,在研制自主知识产权GPU过程中,采用本方法设计各部分性能指标,评估统一染色GPU图形处理性能与实测相比,误差小于7.5%。     

A GPU Tile-Load-Map architecture for terrain rendering: theory and applications

This paper describes a robust, modular, complete GPU architecture—the Tile-Load-Map (TLM)—designed for the real-time visualization of wide textured terrains created with arbitrary meshes. It extends and completes our previous succinct paper Amara et al. (ISVC 2007, Part 1, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4841, pp. 586–597, Springer, Berlin, 2007) by giving further technical and implementation details. It provides new solutions to problems that had been left unresolved, in the context of a joint use of OpenGL and CUDA, optimized on the G80 graphics chip. We explain the crucial components of the shaders, and emphasize the progress we have proposed, while resolving some difficulties. We show that this texturing architecture is well suited to current challenges, and takes into account most of the distinctive aspects of terrain rendering. Finally, we demonstrate how the design of the TLM facilitates the integration of geomatic input-data into procedural selection/rendering tasks on the GPU, and immediate applications to amplification. Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Human action recognition based on scene semantics

Like outdoors, indoor security is also a critical problem and human action recognition in indoor area is still a hot topic. Most studies on human action recognition ignored the semantic information of a scene, whereas indoors contains varieties of semantics. Meanwhile, the depth sensor with color and depth data is more suitable for extracting the semantics context in human actions. Hence, this paper proposed an indoor action recognition method using Kinect based on the semantics of a scene. First, we proposed a trajectory clustering algorithm for a three-dimensional (3D) scene by combining the different characteristics of people such as the spatial location, movement direction, and speed. Based on the clustering results and scene context, it concludes a region of interest (ROI) extraction method for indoors, and dynamic time warping (DTW) is used to study the abnormal action sequences. Finally, the color and depth-data-based 3D motion history image (3D–MHI) features and the semantics context of the scene were combined to recognize human action. In the experiment, two datasets were tested and the results demonstrate that our semantics-based method performs better than other methods.

     

Computer graphics for water modeling and rendering: a survey

A key topic in computer graphics is the realistic representation of natural phenomena. Among the natural objects, one of the most interesting (and most difficult to deal with) is water. Its inherent complexity, far beyond that of most artificial objects, represents an irresistible challenge for the computer graphics world. Thus, during the last two decades we have witnessed an increasing number of papers addressing this problem from several points of view. However, the computer graphics community still lacks a survey classifying the vast literature on this topic, which is certainly unorganized and dispersed and hence, difficult to follow. This paper aims to fill this gap by offering a historical survey on the most relevant computer graphics techniques developed during the 1980s and 1990s for realistic modeling, rendering and animation of water.     

基于可编程流水线的水墨画效果实时绘制

为了提高对三维模型进行实时水墨渲染的效率,同时扩展水墨效果在计算机动画中的应用,利用先进的可编程图形流水线技术,结合多种纹理贴图技术,边缘评估算法,多种图像空间内的后期处理算法,实现了水墨风格生物动画的高效率实时渲染.用户可根据需要对场景和系统进行配置并实时调整视角和缩放.实验结果表明,运算速度能够满足交互系统的实时性需求.     

A scene graph based visualization method for representing continuous simulation data

This paper proposes a scene graph based visualization method that can verify time-varying continuous analysis simulation in a virtual reality (VR) environment by using the computer-aided engineering (CAE) data of structural analysis in product development. In previous research, the use of CAE analysis data has been problematic because of the lack of any interactive simulation controls for visualizing continuous simulation data. Moreover, the research on post-processing methods for real-time evaluation of CAE analysis data has not been sufficient. We therefore propose a scene graph based visualization method for representing continuous simulation data. The method can continuously visualize static analysis data independently of any timeline; it can also continuously visualize dynamic analysis data that varies in relation to the timeline. The visualization system for continuous simulation data, which includes CAE2VR Middleware that interfaces with various formats of CAE analysis data as well as functions for visualizing continuous simulation data and operational functions, enables users to verify simulation results with more realistic scenes.     

Computer graphics for directed graph design methods

A computer graphics package is described for use on a fast, analogue, refreshed display system connected locally to a minicomputer. The package allows users to build-up and edit a database of directed graph designs, which can be used to represent computational structures, particularly electronic hardware.     

A processor architecture for 3D graphics

The DLX/3DCP architecture that uses a method of parallel processing on 3-D vectors to overcome the problem of the large number of floating-point operations required in 3-D graphics which limits the performance of graphics systems is described. The architecture's design offers general-purpose programmability from the high-level object-oriented language C++ and generates performance expected only from dedicated special-purpose hardware. Results that show the architecture's performance on graphics operations are presented and compared to the performance of other RISC processors     

DENet: a deep architecture for audio surveillance applications

Neural Computing and Applications - In the last years, a big interest of both the scientific community and the market has been devoted to the design of audio surveillance systems, able to analyse...     

Collision detection for interactive graphics applications

Collision detection and response are important for interactive graphics applications such as vehicle simulators and virtual reality. Unfortunately, previous collision detection algorithms are too slow for interactive use. The paper presents a new algorithm for rigid or articulated objects that meets performance goals through a form of time critical computing. The algorithm supports progressive refinement, detecting collisions between successively tighter approximations to object surfaces as the application allows it more processing time. The algorithm uses simple four dimensional geometry to approximate motion, and hierarchies of spheres to approximate three dimensional surfaces at multiple resolutions. In a sample application, the algorithm allows interactive performance that is not possible with a good previous algorithm. In particular, the new algorithm provides acceptable accuracy while maintaining a steady and high frame rate, which in some cases improves on the previous algorithm's rate by more than two orders of magnitude     

A model for adapting 3D graphics based on scalable coding, real-time simplification and remote rendering

Most current multiplayer 3D games can only be played on dedicated platforms, requiring specifically designed content and communication over a predefined network. To overcome these limitations, the OLGA (On-Line GAming) consortium has devised a framework to develop distributive, multiplayer 3D games. Scalability at the level of content, platforms and networks is exploited to achieve the best trade-offs between complexity and quality.

Relationship between scene complexity and perceptual performance for computer graphics simulations

An important goal for the design of visual displays is to determine how much realism or scene complexity to include in a computer simulation to reach a given level of performance. This is an important task since the present trend in computer graphics is to include the highest level of realism or scene complexity possible in a simulation. However, it may not be necessary to always include the highest level of realism or complexity to reach an acceptable level of performance. In fact, needless degrees of realism, and thus computational resources, may be wasted in the quest for ‘photographic’ realism. To study the relationship between scene complexity and human performance, three different simulations of scene complexity were modeled for a final approach task. The subject's task were to estimate two aspects of situation awareness, perceived altitude and aimpoint, during a simulated final approach at nine unique distances to threshold. The three levels of scene complexity included a homogeneous Lambertian shaded flat surface, farmlands, and farmlands with hills. The results indicated that increasing the level of scene complexity lead to better performance in judging both altitude and aimpoint during the simulated final approach. The relationship between scene complexity and perceptual performance for computer graphics simulations are discussed.     

A consistency-free memory architecture for sort-last parallel rendering processors

Current rendering processors are aiming to process triangles as fast as possible and they have the tendency of equipping with multiple rasterizers to be capable of handling a number of triangles in parallel for increasing polygon rendering performance. However, those parallel architectures may have the consistency problem when more than one rasterizer try to access the data at the same address. This paper proposes a consistency-free memory architecture for sort-last parallel rendering processors, in which a consistency-free pixel cache architecture is devised and effectively associated with three different memory systems consisting of a single frame buffer, a memory interface unit, and consistency-test units. Furthermore, the proposed architecture can reduce the latency caused by pixel cache misses because the rasterizer does not wait until cache miss handling is completed when the pixel cache miss occurs. The experimental results show that the proposed architecture can achieve almost linear speedup upto four rasterizers with a single frame buffer.     

基于QtOpenGL的大容量图形渲染性能优化研究

随着国产计算机的推广应用,原X86平台开发的软件经常面临国产化平台适配的需求,且要求适配后的功能、性能不降低.以大批量实时图像渲染类的应用为例,性能问题是国产化平台适配时经常遇到的难题.文章以主流的国产软硬件平台为研究基准,以对比实验形式论证了基于QtOpenGL的实时渲染软件国产化适配性能优化的关键技术点及解决方法.提出了六条切实可行的显示性能优化技术途径,这些成果对于基于QtOpenGL的国产平台显示性能的优化工作有借鉴意义.     

基于3D结构和图像的复杂场景建模绘制

文章讨论了IBP（imagpe-based-rendering)的现状和发展,并在分析IBR方法的基础上提出了一种改进的建模绘制方法——基于3D结构和图像的复杂场建模绘制。即结合3D结构,整体应用三维实体,在某些结构复杂的功节处应用IBR技术,以达到真实绘制。     

Visual graph modeling for scene recognition and mobile robot localization

Image retrieval and categorization may need to consider several types of visual features and spatial information between them (e.g., different point of views of an image). This paper presents a novel approach that exploits an extension of the language modeling approach from information retrieval to the problem of graph-based image retrieval and categorization. Such versatile graph model is needed to represent the multiple points of views of images. A language model is defined on such graphs to handle a fast graph matching. We present the experiments achieved with several instances of the proposed model on two collections of images: one composed of 3,849 touristic images and another composed of 3,633 images captured by a mobile robot. Experimental results show that using visual graph model (VGM) improves the accuracies of the results of the standard language model (LM) and outperforms the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method.