Fast and Dynamic Generation of Linear Octree Based on Depth Buffer

In order to meet the need of interactive operation in 3D graphic systems, a hardware accelerated based algorithm for fast and dynamic generation of linear octree is proposed. In this paper, depth buffer is used to determine whether a voxel is inside or outside a 3D object. Firstly a basic algorithm which can export the codes of linear octree in order dynamically is presented. In the basic algorithm, a stack structure is used to store the decomposition status of octree, and the codes are exported during the stack operation so the sort and compression of nodes is avoided. Secondly the depth buffer is further used to accelerate the basic algorithm. The result shows that the basic algorithm is a robust and relatively fast algorithm. And the process of linear octree generation can be run fairly fast under high resolution when the accelerated algorithm is employed.