Efficient substitutes for subdivision surfaces in feature-quality games

  • Authors:
  • Tianyun Ni

  • Affiliations:
  • NVIDIA Corporation

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2010 Courses
  • Year:
  • 2010

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

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. Although Catmull-Clark surfaces are popular in Digital Content Creation packages (DCC) and feature films, 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. Developments in hardware and recent theoretical results in efficient substitutes for subdivision surfaces bring us to the possibility to see real-time cinematic rendering in the near future.