Line Rendering Primitive
Keen-Hon Wong, Xin Ouyang, Tiow-Seng Tan · IEEE Visualization · 2003
We observe that there is a gap between the two known primitives of point and triangle in representing and rendering 3D models or surfaces; that is, the line, in particular anti-alias line has yet to be studied. Our work is also motivated by the observation that while point is suitable for surfaces with high complexity and irregularity and triangle for regular surfaces, line is suitable for surfaces with regularity along one dimension (such as a cylindrical surface). Figure 2 shows an arm bone where lines or hybrid of lines and points can represent it concisely as most parts of its surface have regularity along one dimension. Without the line primitive, a surface with regularity along one dimension may need to be represented unfavourably by thin or fat triangles, many smaller triangles, or many points. Another view of this motivation is the compression that lines can provide. Given an arbitrary set of points, it may be possible to come up with heuristics to construct a set of lines which represents a larger set of points while maintaining a certain error measure.