Fast Rendering of Complex Environments Using a Spatial
Hierarchy
(Presented at Graphics Interface `96)
the Paper
Abstract: We present a new method for accelerating the
rendering of complex static scenes. The technique is applicable to
unstructured scenes containing arbitrary geometric primitives and has
sublinear asymptotic complexity. Our approach is to construct a
spatial hierarchy of cells over the scene and to associate with each
cell a simplified representation of its contents. The scene is then
rendered using a traversal of the hierarchy in which a cell's
approximation is drawn instead of its contents if the approximation is
sufficiently accurate. We apply the method to several different
scenes and demonstrate significant speedups with little image
degradation. We also exhibit and discuss some of the artifacts that
our approximation may cause.
the Talk
Miscellany