Speaker: Unterguggenberger, Johannes (TU Wien)
Parametric functions are an extremely efficient representation for 3D geometry, capable of compactly modelling highly complex
objects. Once specified, parametric 3D objects allow for visualization at arbitrary levels of detail, at no additional memory cost,
limited only by the amount of evaluated samples. However, mapping the sample evaluation to the hardware rendering pipelines
of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) is not trivial. This has given rise to several specialized solutions, each targeting
interactive rendering of a constrained set of parametric functions. In this paper, we propose a general method for efficient
rendering of parametrically defined 3D objects. Our solution is carefully designed around modern hardware architecture.
Our method adaptively analyzes, allocates and evaluates parametric function samples to produce high-quality renderings.
Geometric precision can be modulated from few pixels down to sub-pixel level, enabling real-time frame rates of several 100
frames per second (FPS) for various parametric functions. We propose a dedicated level-of-detail (LOD) stage, which outputs
patches of similar geometric detail to a subsequent rendering stage that uses either a hardware tessellation-based approach
or performs point-based softare rasterization. Our method requires neither preprocessing nor caching, and the proposed
LOD mechanism is fast enough to run each frame. Hence, our approach also lends itself to animated parametric objects.
We demonstrate the benefits of our method over a state-of-the-art spherical harmonics (SH) glyph rendering method, while
showing its flexibility on a range of other demanding shapes.