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Patent

Texture filtering for surface elements

TL;DR: In this article, a method for filtering shading attributes of surface points of a graphic object onto pixels in an image buffer according to depth values stored in a depth buffer, tangential disks are constructed at positions of each surface point.
Abstract: In a method for filtering shade attributes of surface points of a graphic object onto pixels in an image buffer according to depth values stored in a depth buffer, tangential disks are constructed at positions of each surface point. The tangential disks have increasingly larger radii. Each tangential disk is projected to an ellipse in texture space. View independent filter functions are applied at the position of each surface point to generate texture mipmaps for the surface point. The filter functions have an extent equal to the projected tangential disk. The surface point is projected to the pixels in the depth buffer, and a view dependent filter function is applied to each pixel in the image buffer to determine colors for the pixels.
Citations
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Patent
21 Mar 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a high-speed ring topology with two base chip types: a drawing chip, LoopDraw, and an interface chip,LoopInterface, each of which has a set of pins that supports an identical high speed point to point unidirectional input and output ring interconnect interface: LoopLink.
Abstract: A high-speed ring topology. In one embodiment, two base chip types are required: a “drawing” chip, LoopDraw, and an “interface” chip, LoopInterface. Each of these chips have a set of pins that supports an identical high speed point to point unidirectional input and output ring interconnect interface: the LoopLink. The LoopDraw chip uses additional pins to connect to several standard memories that form a high bandwidth local memory sub-system. The LoopInterface chip uses additional pins to support a high speed host computer host interface, at least one video output interface, and possibly also additional non-local interconnects to other LoopInterface chip(s).

200 citations

Patent
07 Apr 2003
TL;DR: In this article, improved mechanisms for controlling texture sampling are provided that enable 3D accelerator hardware to greatly increase the level of realism in rendering, including anisotropic surface reflections, self-shadowing, and ray-cast volumetric sampling.
Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for controlling texture sampling in connection with computer graphics in a computer system. In various embodiments, improved mechanisms for controlling texture sampling are provided that enable 3-D accelerator hardware to greatly increase the level of realism in rendering, including improved mechanisms for (1) motion blur; (2) generating anisotropic surface reflections (3) generating surface self-shadowing (4) ray-cast volumetric sampling (4) self-shadowed volumetric rendering and (5) self-shadowed volumetric ray-casting. In supplementing existing texture sampling techniques, parameters for texture sampling may be replaced and/or modified.

61 citations

Patent
08 Aug 2003
TL;DR: In this article, a panoramic view of a cube map style rendering using an associated depth map to supply three-dimensionalality to the pre-rendered scene is presented. But this rendering may be indistinguishable from rendering the original scene in real-time except that the background is of prerendered quality.
Abstract: Video game play rendered using a panoramic view of a cube map style rendering uses an associated depth map to supply three-dimensionality to the pre-rendered scene. The resulting panoramic rendering may be indistinguishable from rendering the original scene in real-time except that the background is of pre-rendered quality.

59 citations

Patent
Simon Winder1
03 Aug 2012
TL;DR: Point Cloud Smoother as mentioned in this paper provides various techniques for refining a 3D point cloud or other 3D input model to generate a smoothed and denoised 3D output model.
Abstract: A “Point Cloud Smoother” provides various techniques for refining a 3D point cloud or other 3D input model to generate a smoothed and denoised 3D output model. Smoothing and denoising is achieved, in part, by robustly fitting planes to a neighborhood of points around each point of the input model and using those planes to estimate new points and corresponding normals of the 3D output model. These techniques are useful for a number of purposes, including, but not limited to, free viewpoint video (FVV), which, when combined with the smoothing techniques enabled by the Point Cloud Smoother, allows 3D data of videos or images to be denoised and then rendered and viewed from any desired viewpoint that is supported by the input data.

54 citations

Patent
10 Jul 2009
TL;DR: In this article, a method and apparatus for sorting data into spatial bins or buckets using a graphics processing unit (GPU) is presented, which takes unsorted point data as input and scatters the points, in sorted order, into a set of bins.
Abstract: A method and apparatus for sorting data into spatial bins or buckets using a graphics processing unit (GPU). The method takes unsorted point data as input and scatters the points, in sorted order, into a set of bins. This key operation enables construction of a spatial data structure that is useful for applications such as particle simulation or collision detection. The disclosed method achieves better performance scaling than previous methods by exploiting geometry shaders to progressively trim the size of a working set. The method also leverages predicated rendering functionality to allow early termination without CPU/GPU synchronization. Furthermore, unlike previous techniques, the method can guarantee sorted output without requiring sorted input. This allows the method to be used to implement a form of bucket sort using the GPU.

43 citations

References
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Jul 1999
TL;DR: The LDI tree is presented, which combines a hierarchical space partitioning scheme with the concept of the LDI, and preserves the sampling rates of the reference images by adaptively selecting an LDI in the L DI tree for each pixel.
Abstract: Using multiple reference images in 3D image warping has been a challenging problem. Recently, the Layered Depth Image (LDI) was proposed by Shade et al. to merge multiple reference images under a single center of projection, while maintaining the simplicity of warping a single reference image. However it does not consider the issue of sampling rate. We present the LDI tree, which combines a hierarchical space partitioning scheme with the concept of the LDI. It preserves the sampling rates of the reference images by adaptively selecting an LDI in the LDI tree for each pixel. While rendering from the LDI tree, we only have to traverse the LDI tree to the levels that are comparable to the sampling rate of the output image. We also present a progressive refinement feature and a “gap filling” algorithm implemented by pre-filtering the LDI tree. We show that the amount of memory required has the same order of growth as the 2D reference images. This also bounds the complexity of rendering time to be less than directly rendering from all reference images. CR Categories: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation Viewing Algorithms; I.3.6 [Computer Graphics] Methodology and Techniques Graphics data structures and data types; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism. Additional

209 citations

Patent
29 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, a surface of an object is partitioned into a plurality of cells having a grid resolution related to an image plane resolution, and attributes of the portion of the object contained in the cell are assinged to each surface element and each link.
Abstract: Provided is a method for modeling a representation of a graphic object. A surface of the object is partitioned into a plurality of cells having a grid resolution related to an image plane resolution. A single zero-dimensional surface element is stored in the memory for each cell located on the surface of the object. The surface elements in adjacent cells are conected by links, and attributes of the portion of the object contained in the cell are assinged to each surface element and each link. The location of the attributed surface elements can be moved according to forces acting on the object.

69 citations

Patent
30 Jul 1998
TL;DR: In this paper, a circular pixel filter is projected onto a texture map to define an elliptical footprint in that texture map, and sample points are determined on a line in the footprint that closely approximates the major axis.
Abstract: A computer graphics system maps textures to displayed anti-aliased images with surfaces defined at oblique angles to the viewer. A circular pixel filter is projected onto a texture map to define an elliptical footprint in that texture map. The elliptical footprint has a major axis. Sample points are determined on a line in the footprint that closely approximates the major axis. These sample points are mapped to levels of detail and locations within a mip-map. Using a space-invariant filter, a texture value is computed for each sample point using data from one or more texture maps within the mip-map. These texture values for the sample points are post-filtered using a Gaussian filter function and summed to produce a final texture value. Blending the final texture with other characteristics of the pixel a produces the pixel data that are displayed on a display screen.

53 citations

Patent
01 Sep 1999
TL;DR: In this article, a surface of an object is partitioned into a plurality of cells having a grid resolution related to an image plane resolution, and a subset of the surface elements are selected as primary surface elements.
Abstract: A method generates a representation of a graphic object in a memory. A surface of the object is partitioned into a plurality of cells having a grid resolution related to an image plane resolution. A single zero-dimensional surface element is stored in the memory for each cell located on the surface of the object. A subset of the surface elements are selected as primary surface elements. The unselected surface elements are identified as secondary surface elements. Adjacent primary surface elements are connected by links. Primary attributes of the portion of the object contained in a particular cell are assigned to the associated primary surface element and the links of the associated primary surface element. The unselected surface elements are partitioned into groups, there being one group for each primary surface element, and secondary attributes of the portion of the object contained in a particular cell are assigned to the associated secondary surface elements.

32 citations

DOI
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, the first of a series of technical documents of the joint research project on the mathematical properties of the representation, compression and dynamics of Surfels, which is carried out by ETH (Zurich, Switzerland) and MERL (Boston, USA).
Abstract: The following report is the first of a series of technical documents of the joint research project on the mathematical properties of the representation, compression and dynamics of Surfels, which is carried out by ETH (Zurich, Switzerland) and MERL (Boston, USA). It documents the work performed at ETH between December 1998 and March 1999. The objective of the initial phase of the project was to give a survey and classification of existing techniques, each dealing with a particular issue involved in the project or pursuing a similar purpose as the project. Consequently, this report is mainly presenting a structured literature overview of relevant contributions.

18 citations