Rendering Tubes from Discrete Curves Using Hardware Tessellation
Gustavo Nunes, Alexandre Valdetaro, Alberto Barbosa Raposo, Bruno Feijó, Rodrigo Toledo · Journal of Graphics Tools · 2012
This paper introduces an approach to render 3D tubes by using hardware tessellation. The proposed technique explores the new GPU pipeline—hull, tessellator, and domain stages—so that the tube mesh can be created in the last possible step inside the pipeline, thereby reducing the bottleneck of the CPU to GPU bandwidth and enabling real-time frame rates for models with a massive number of tubes. Because the proposed solution creates the meshes dynamically, it enables viewing of the tubes even when the camera is far away from them, without the typical aliasing problem. This approach demonstrates a well-balanced solution for 3D-tube rendering in CAD applications. We made considerable gains on four major concerns in real-time rendering: performance, image quality, simplicity of implementation, and memory consumption.