A Framework for Interactive Hypertexture Modelling

Hypertexturing can be a powerful way of adding rich geometric details to surfaces at low memory cost by using a procedural three‐dimensional (3D) space distortion. However, this special kind of texturing technique still raises a major problem: the efficient control of the visual result. In this paper, we introduce a framework for interactive hypertexture modelling. This framework is based on two contributions. First, we propose a reformulation of the density modulation function. Our density modulation is based on the notion of shape transfer function. This function, which can be easily edited by users, allows us to control in an intuitive way the visual appearance of the geometric details resulting from the space distortion. Second, we propose to use a hybrid surface and volume‐point‐based representation in order to be able to dynamically hypertexture arbitrary objects at interactive frame rates. The rendering consists in a combined splat‐ and raycasting‐based direct volume rendering technique. The splats are used to model the volumetric object while raycasting allows us to add the details. An experimental study on users shows that our approach improves the design of hypertextures and yet preserves their procedural nature.