Efficient, Parallel Level-of-Detail Rendering of Meshes

MPhil Thesis Defence


Title: "Efficient, Parallel Level-of-Detail Rendering of Meshes"

By

Mr. Liang Hu


Abstract

Rendering complex geometric models efficiently for interactive graphics 
applications has always been a challenging problem. Geometry level-of-detail 
approaches have been introduced to computer graphics to handle complex meshes, 
and with the recently rapid evolution of graphics hardware, accelerations of 
these approaches with a commodity GPU has become practical. This thesis reviews 
the some of the important work on geometry level-of-detail, and presents a 
scheme for view-dependent geometry level-of-detail control that is implemented 
entirely on programmable graphics hardware. Our scheme selectively refines and 
coarsens an arbitrary triangle mesh at the granularity of individual vertices 
to create meshes that are highly adapted to dynamic view parameters. Such 
fine-grain control has previously been demonstrated using sequential CPU 
algorithms. However, these algorithms involve pointer-based structures with 
intricate dependencies that cannot be handled efficiently within the restricted 
framework of GPU parallelism. We show that by introducing new data structures 
and dependency rules, one can realize fine-grain progressive mesh updates as a 
sequence of parallel streaming passes over the mesh elements. A major design 
challenge is that the GPU processes stream elements in isolation. The mesh 
update algorithm has time complexity proportional to the selectively refined 
mesh, and moreover can be amortized across several frames. The result is a 
single standard index buffer than can be used directly for rendering. The 
static data structure is remarkably compact, requiring only 57% more memory 
than an indexed triangle list. We demonstrate real-time exploration of complex 
models with normals and textures, as well as a series of multi-pass rendering 
techniques, including shadowing, semitransparent surface rendering, depth of 
field and motion blur effects that make direct use of the resulting dynamic 
index buffer.


Date:			Friday, 28 August 2009

Time:			2:00pm - 4:00pm

Venue:			Room 4480
 			Lifts 25-26

Committee Members:	Dr. Pedro Sander (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Chi-Keung Tang (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Huamin Qu


**** ALL are Welcome ****