Authors:
Matthias Trapp
and
Jürgen Döllner
Affiliation:
Hasso-Plattner-Institute and University of Potsdam, Germany
Keyword(s):
Batching, Texture-array Processing, Real-time Rendering.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Hardware Technologies for Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Interactive Environments
;
Real-Time Graphics
;
Real-Time Rendering
;
Rendering
;
Rendering Algorithms
;
Rendering Hardware
Abstract:
High-quality rendering of 3D virtual environments typically depends on high-quality 3D models with significant geometric complexity and texture data. One major bottleneck for real-time image-synthesis represents the number of state changes, which a specific rendering API has to perform. To improve performance, batching can be used to group and sort geometric primitives into batches to reduce the number of required state changes, whereas the size of the batches determines the number of required draw-calls, and therefore, is critical for rendering performance. For example, in the case of texture atlases, which provide an approach for efficient texture management, the batch size is limited by the efficiency of the texture-packing algorithm and the texture resolution itself. This paper presents a pre-processing approach and rendering technique that overcomes these limitations by further grouping textures or texture atlases and thus enables the creation of larger geometry batches. It is b
ased on texture arrays in combination with an additional indexing schema that is evaluated at run-time using shader programs. This type of texture management is especially suitable for real-time rendering of large-scale texture-rich 3D virtual environments, such as virtual city and landscape models.
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