Real-time texture-mapped vector glyphs

  • Authors:
  • Zheng Qin;Michael D. McCool;Craig S. Kaplan

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Waterloo;University of Waterloo;University of Waterloo

  • Venue:
  • I3D '06 Proceedings of the 2006 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We present a vector graphics representation suitable for real-time rendering on GPUs. Our representation can be used in place of a texture map, and renders precise antialiased edges at any magnification. A combination of texture data and procedural computation is used to evaluate an exact signed distance to a contour and its gradient. An optimized uniform grid accelerator is created using Voronoi analysis and redundancy elimination, so only the distances to a small constant number of features need be computed at every access. Contours and sharp features can be exactly reconstructed using a constant amount of computation per pixel. Our representation supports inexpensive high-quality anisotropic antialiasing as well as special effects such as outlining (with both rounded and sharp miters) and embossing.We have applied our representation to the important application of glyph rendering. Variations in glyph complexity are handled by storing different glyphs at different grid resolutions. Large blocks of glyphs can be rendered efficiently with a single indirection through an index texture.