GPU Accelerated Image Aligned Splatting

Neophytou, Neophytos; Mueller, Klaus

GPU Accelerated Image Aligned Splatting

Files

197-205.pdf (332.23 KB)

Date

2005

Authors

Neophytou, Neophytos
Mueller, Klaus

Publisher

The Eurographics Association

Abstract

Splatting is a popular technique for volume rendering, where voxels are represented by Gaussian kernels, whose pre-integrated footprints are accumulated to form the image. Splatting has been mainly used to render pre-shaded volumes, which can result in significant blurring in zoomed views. This can be avoided in the image-aligned splatting scheme, where one accumulates kernel slices into equi-distant, parallel sheet buffers, followed by classification, shading, and compositing. In this work we attempt to evolve this algorithm to the next level: GPU based acceleration. First we describe the challenges that the highly parallel Gather architecture of modern GPUs poses to the Scatter based nature of a splatting algorithm. We then describe a number of strategies that exploit newly introduced features of the latest-generation hardware to address these limitations. Two crucial operations to boost the performance in image-aligned splatting are the early elimination of hidden splats and the skipping of empty buffer-space. We will describe mechanisms which take advantage of the early z-culling hardware facilities to accomplish both of these operations efficiently in hardware.

        @inproceedings{10.2312:VG/VG05/197-205
,
booktitle = {Volume Graphics 2005
},
editor = {Klaus Mueller and Thomas Ertl and Eduard Groeller
},
title = {{GPU Accelerated Image Aligned Splatting
}},
author = {Neophytou, Neophytos and 
Mueller, Klaus
},
year = {2005
},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association
},
ISSN = {1727-8376
},
ISBN = {3-905673-26-6
},
DOI = {10.2312/VG/VG05/197-205
}
}