Efficient skeleton-guided displaced subdivision surfaces

Abstract

Displacement mapping is a computer graphics technique that uses scalar offsets along normals on a base surface to represent and render a model with highly geometric details. The technique natively compresses the model and saves memory I/O. A subdivision surface is the ideal base surface, due to its good geometric properties, such as arbitrary topology, global smoothness, and multi-resolution via hardware tessellation, among others. Two of the main challenges in displacement mapping representation are constructing the base surface faithfully and generating displacement maps efficiently. In this paper, we propose an efficient skeleton-guided displaced subdivision surfaces method. The construction of the base mesh is guided by a sketched skeleton. To make the shape of the base surface fit the input model well, we develop an efficient progressive GPU-based subdivision fitting method. Finally, a GPU-based raycasting method is proposed to sample the input model and generate the displacement maps. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently generate a high-quality displacement mapping representation. Compared with the traditional displaced subdivision surface method, the proposed method is more suitable for the modern rendering pipeline and has higher efficiency.