“Efficient Substitutes for Subdivision Surfaces in Feature-Quality Games” by Ni
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Efficient Substitutes for Subdivision Surfaces in Feature-Quality Games
Abstract:
As real-time graphics aspires to movie-quality rendering, higher-order, smooth-surface representations take center stage. Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces are the dominant higher-order surface type used in feature films, as they can model surfaces of arbitrary topological type and provide a compact representation for smooth surfaces that facilitate modeling and animation. But their use has been hindered in real-time applications because the exact evaluation of such surfaces on modern GPUs is neither memory nor performance efficient. The advent of DirectX 11, recent theoretical results in efficient substitutes for subdivision surfaces, and recent hardware advances offer the possibility to see real-time cinematic rendering in the near future.
This course covers the hardware tessellation part of the SIGGRAPH 2009 Course Efficient Substitutes for Subdivision Surfaces with the emphasis on character tessellation in movie-quality games. It adds additional material based on recent research findings and practical optimizations. The goal of this course is to familiarize attendees with the practical aspects of introducing substitutes in subdivision surfaces to increase efficiency in real-time applications.
The course begins by highlighting the properties that make SubD modeling attractive and introduces some recent techniques to capture these properties by alternative surface representations with a smaller foot-print. It lists and compares the new surface representations and focuses on their implementation on current and next-generation GPUs, then addresses crucial practical issues, such as watertight evaluation, creases and corners, view-dependent displacement occlusion mapping, and LOD computation. Finally and most importantly, it explains how these advanced techniques have been adopted into their gaming pipelines.
Additional Information:
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of geometric modeling algorithms, in particular subdivision surfaces, and some familiarity with the graphics pipeline of modern GPUs.
