The art of computer programming, volume 1 (3rd ed.): fundamental algorithms
The art of computer programming, volume 1 (3rd ed.): fundamental algorithms
A Characterization of Ten Hidden-Surface Algorithms
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms
The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms
Introduction to Discrete Structures for Computer Science and Engineering
Introduction to Discrete Structures for Computer Science and Engineering
Graphs and Hypergraphs
Three-dimensional medical imaging: algorithms and computer systems
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Partitioning and ordering large radiosity computations
SIGGRAPH '94 Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
Walkthrough—a dynamic graphics system for simulating virtual buildings
I3D '86 Proceedings of the 1986 workshop on Interactive 3D graphics
A note on binary plane partitions
SCG '01 Proceedings of the seventeenth annual symposium on Computational geometry
VRST '00 Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology
Binary space partitions for line segments with a limited number of directions
SODA '02 Proceedings of the thirteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Cell-projection of cyclic meshes
Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '01
A more flexible image generation environment
SIGGRAPH '82 Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
Voronoi diagram depth sorting for polygon visibility ordering
Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and Southeast Asia
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
The principal calculation performed by all visible surface algorithms is the determination of the visible polygon at each pixel in the image. Of the many possible speedups and efficiencies found for this problem, only one published algorithm (developed almost a decade ago by a group at General Electric) took advantage of an observation that many visibility calculations could be performed without knowledge of the eventual viewing position and orientation—once for all possible images. The method is based on a “potential obscuration” relation between polygons in the simulated environment. Unfortunately, the method worked only for certain objects; unmanagable objects had to be manually (and expertly!) subdivided into managable pieces. Described in this paper is a solution to this problem which allows substantial a priori visibility determination for all possible objects without any manual intervention. The method also identifies the ( hopefully, few) visibility calculations which remain to be performed after the viewing position is specified. Also diescussed is the development of still stronger solutions which could further reduce the number of these visibility calculations remaining at image generation time. The reduction in overall processing and memory requirements enabled by this approach may be quite significant, especially for those applications (e.g., 3-D simulation, animation, interactive design) in which numerous visible surface images are generated from a relatively stable data base.