Title :
FastSplats: optimized splatting on rectilinear grids
Author :
Huang, Jian ; Mueller, Klaus ; Shareef, Naeem ; Crawfis, Roger
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. & Inf. Sci., Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH, USA
Abstract :
Splatting is widely applied in many areas, including volume, point-based and image-based rendering. Improvements to splatting, such as eliminating popping and color bleeding, occasion-based acceleration, post-rendering classification and shading, have all been recently accomplished. These improvements share a common need for efficient frame-buffer accesses. We present an optimized software splatting package, using a newly designed primitive, called FastSplat, to scan-convert footprints. Our approach does not use texture mapping hardware, but supports the whole pipeline in memory. In such an integrated pipeline, we are then able to study the optimization strategies and address image quality issues. While this research is meant for a study of the inherent trade-off of splatting, our renderer, purely in software, achieves 3- to 5-fold speedups over a top-end texture hardware implementation (for opaque data sets). We further propose a method of efficient occlusion culling using a summed area table of opacity. 3D solid texturing and bump mapping capabilities are demonstrated to show the flexibility of such an integrated rendering pipeline. A detailed numerical error analysis, in addition to the performance and storage issues, is also presented. Our approach requires low storage and uses simple operations. Thus, it is easily implementable in hardware.
Keywords :
error analysis; hidden feature removal; image texture; opacity; optimisation; rendering (computer graphics); 3D solid texturing; FastSplats; bump mapping; color bleeding; footprint scan-conversion; frame-buffer access; hardware implementation; image quality; in-memory texture mapping pipeline; integrated rendering pipeline; numerical error analysis; occasion-based acceleration; occlusion culling; opacity; opaque data sets; optimized splatting; performance; popping; post-rendering classification; rectilinear grids; shading; software; speedup; storage; summed area table; Acceleration; Design optimization; Hardware; Hemorrhaging; Image quality; Packaging; Pipelines; Rendering (computer graphics); Software packages; Solids;
Conference_Titel :
Visualization 2000. Proceedings
Conference_Location :
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-6478-3
DOI :
10.1109/VISUAL.2000.885698