ADAPTIVE QUAD PATCHES: AN ADAPTIVE REGULAR STRUCTURE FOR WEB DISTRIBUTION AND ADAPTIVE RENDERING OF 3D MODELS

Abstract

We introduce an approach for efficient distribution and adaptive rendering of 3D mesh models supporting a simple quad parameterization. Our method extends and combines recent results in geometric processing, real-time rendering, and web programming. In particular: we exploit recent results on surface reconstruction and isometric parametrization to transform point clouds into two-manifold meshes whose parametrization domain is a small collection of 2D square regions; we encode the resulting parameterized meshes into a very compact multiresolution structures composed of variable resolution quad patches whose geometry and texture is stored in a tightly packed texture atlas; we adaptively stream and render variable resolution shape representations using a GPU-accelerated adaptive tessellation algorithm with negligible CPU overhead. Real-time performance is achieved on portable GPU platforms using OpenGL, as well as on exploiting emerging web-based environments based on WebGL. Promising applications of the technology range from the automatic creation of rapidly renderable objects for games to the set-up of browsable 3D models repositories in the web that will be accessible by upcoming generation of WebGL-enabled web browers