Roger A. Crawfis CIS 781 The Ohio State University Visibility Culling Roger A. Crawfis CIS 781 The Ohio State University

Interactive Frame Rates Are Difficult To Achieve

The Problem Two keys for an interactive system Interactive rendering speed: too many polygons – difficult!! Uniform frame rate: varied scene complexity – difficult!!

Possible Solutions Visibility Culling – back face culling, frustum culling, occlusion culling (might not be sufficient) Levels of Detail (LOD) – hierarchical structures and choose one to satisfy the frame rate requirement

LOD Selections How to pick the Optimal ones??!!

Occlusion Culling Hidden Surface Removal methods are not fast enough for massive models on current hardware Occlusion Culling avoids rendering primitives that are occluded by another part of the scene Occlusion Culling techniques are ideally output sensitive – runtime is proportional to the size of exact visibility set

Related Work Hierarchical Z-Buffer Hierarchical LODs Image space occlusion culling method [Greene’93] Build a layered Z-pyramid with a different resolution of the Z-buffer at each level Allows quick accept/reject Hierarchical LODs Simplification Culling : Approximate entire branch of the scene graph by an HLOD Can we use HLODs as occluders/occludees?

Visibility in Games What do we need it for? Increase of rendering speed by removing unseen scene data from the rendering pipeline as early as possible Reduction of data transfers to the graphics hardware Current games would not be possible without visibility calculations

Visibility methods 2 very different categories: Visibility from a region (Portals, PVS) (Quake, Unreal, Severance and co.) Visibility from a point (Z-Buffer, BFC,...) Racing games, outdoor scenes, sports games etc.

Point-Visibility Occlusion Traditionally used: Back-Face culling Z-Buffering View frustum culling Octree Quadtree

Only culling to the left and right sides of the viewing frustum. A PSX Example Iron Soldier 3 on PSX: View frustum culling based on a quad-tree Back-face culling Painters algorithm Only culling to the left and right sides of the viewing frustum.

New Occlusion Methods Image-space occlusion culling Hierarchical Z-Buffering Hierarchical Occlusion Maps Object-space occlusion culling Hierarchical View Frustum culling Hierarchical Back-Face culling

Visibility Culling We will look at these: Hierarchical Back-face culling View-frustum culling Occlusion culling Detail culling

Hierarchical Back-Face Culling Partitions each model into clusters Primitives in one cluster are: Facing into similar directions Lie close to each other If the cluster fails the visibility test, all primitives in this cluster are culled

Hierarchical Back-Face Culling

Normal Maps Create a data structure that places each polygon in the space according to its normal direction. Partition this space and then simply look at those partitions that might have visible polygons. phi theta

View-Frustum Culling Remove objects that are outside the viewing frustum Construct bounding volumes (BVs) Create hierarchy BV/V-F intersection tests Mostly done in “Application Stage”

View-Frustum Culling Culling against bounding volumes to save time Bounding volumes – AABB, OBB, Spheres, etc. – easy to compute, as tight as possible AABB Sphere OBB

View-Frustum Culling Often done hierarchically to save time In-order, top-down traversal and test

View-Frustum Culling Two popular hierarchical data structures – BSP Tree and Octree Axis-Aligned BSP Polygon-Aligned BSP Intersecting?

View-Frustum Culling Octree A parent has 8 childrens Subdivide the space until the number of primitives within each leaf node is less than a threshold In-order, top-down traversal

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Z-Buffer is arranged in an image pyramid. Scene is partitioned in an octree. Octree nodes are tested against the Z-Pyramid where pixels have the same size. Visible nodes serve as input for the next frame. Relies on HW visibility query.

HZB/Hierarchical occlusion maps

Hierarchical occlusion maps Potential occluders are pre-selected These occluders are rendered to the occlusion map. The hierarchy can be built with MIP-Mapping HW Depth test after occlusion test Separate depth estimation buffer

Hierarchical View Frustum Culling Speeds up VFC by testing only 2 box corners of a bounding box first. Plane coherency during frame advancing Test against VF-octants. BB-Child masking

Detail Culling A technique that sacrifices quality for speed Base on the size of projected BV – if it is too small, discard it. Also often done hierarchically. Always helps to create a hierarchical structure, or scene graph.

Occlusion Culling Discard objects that are occluded Z-buffer is not the smartest algorithm in the world (particularly for high depth- complexity scenes) We want to avoid the processing of invisible objects

Occlusion Culling G: input graphics data OcclusionCulling (G) Or = empty For each object g in G if (isOccluded(g, Or)) skip g else render (g) update (Or) end End G: input graphics data Or: occlusion representation The problem: algorithms for isOccluded() Fast update Or

Hierarchical Visibility Object-space octree Primitives in a octree node are hidden if the octree node (cube) is hidden A octree cube is hidden if its 6 faces are hidden polygons Hierarchical visibility test:

Hierarchical Visibility (obj-sp.) From the root of octree: View-frustum culling Scan conversion each of the 6 faces and perform z-buffering If all 6 faces are hidden, discard the entire node and sub-branches Otherwise, render the primitives here and traverse the front-to-back children recursively A conservative algorithm – why?

Hierarchical Visibility (obj-sp.) Scan conversion the octree faces can be expensive – cover a large number of pixels (overhead) How can we reduce the overhead? Goal: quickly conclude that a large polygon is hidden Method: use hierarchical z-buffer !

Hierarchical Z-buffer An image-space approach Create a Z-pyramid 1 value ¼ resolution ½ resolution Original Z-buffer

Hierarchical Z-buffer (2) 1 0 6 0 3 1 2 3 9 1 2 9 1 2 2 6 9 2 9 Keep the maximum value

Hierarchical Z-buffer update Visibility (OctreeNode N) if (isOccluded (N, Zp) then return; for each primitive p in N render and update Zp end for each child node C of N in front-to-back order Visibility ( C )

Some Practical Issues A fast software algorithm Lack of hardware support Scan conversion Efficient query of if a polygon is visible (without render it) Z feedback

Combining with hardware Utilizing frame-to-frame coherence First frame – regular HZ algorithm (software) Remember the visible octree nodes Second frame (view changes slightly) Render the previous visible nodes using OpenGL Read back the Z-buffer and construct Z-pyramid Perform regular HZ (software) What about the third frame? Utilizing hardware to perform rendering and Z-buffering – considerably faster

Hierarchical Occlusion Map Zhang et al SIGGRAPH 98

Basic Ideas Choose a set of graphics objects from the scene as Occluders Use the occluders to define an Occlusion Map (hierarchically) Compare the rest of scene against the occlusion map

Example Blue: Occluders Red: Occludees

Algorithm Pipeline Occluder Viewing Frustum Occluder Rendering Database Culling Selection Build Occlusion Map Hierarchy Real Viewing Frustum Occlusion Test Scene Culling

2-Step Occlusion Test Overlap Test Overlap + Depth = Occlusion

Why decomposition? The occlusion test is done approximately (conservatively) We can afford to be more conservative in depth test than overlap test

Why Decomposition?

Overlap Test – Occlusion Map Representation of projection for overlap test: occlusion map A gray scale image – each pixel represents one block of screen region Generate by rendering occluders

Occlusion Map (OM) Each pixel of the occlusion map has an opacity, which represents the ratio of the sum of the opaque areas in the block to the total area. If fully covered, p= 1, if anti-alised pixel, p <1) Occlusion map: the alpha channel of an image

Overlap Test using OM For each potential occludee, we can scan-convert it and compare against the opacity of the pixels it overlaps Expensive!! Conservative Approximation: use the screen-space bounding box of the occludee (a superset of the actual covered pixels) If all the pixels inside the bounding box are opaque, the object is occluded.

Hierarchical Occlusion Map Like hierarchical Z-buffer, we can create a hierachy to speed up the comparison (for large objects) The low resolution pixel is an average of the high resolution pixels

Overlap Test using HOM Basic Algorithm Start from the lowest resolution If the pixel cover the bounding rectangle has a value 1, the object is occluded Otherwise traverse down the hierarchy: If all children =1: occluded If all children =0; not occluded Otherwise, traverse down further

Approximate Overlap Test Instead of concluding an object is occluded only when the bounding box is within pixels with opacity 1, we can use an threshold between [0,1] Early termination in the high level of the hierarchy What does it mean when a block has high opacity but not one? This is the unique feature of HOM !!

Depth Test Approximate Z (depth) test: A single Z Plane to separate the occluders from occludees.

Depth Test Break the screen into small regions Build at each frame Instead of using Z-buffer, use the occluder’s bounding volume’s farthest Z Compare each potential occludee’s nearest Z (con- servative test)

Occluder Selection Ideal occluder: the visible objects – it’s a joke View-dependent occluder: too expensive Solution: Estimate and build an occluder database Discard objects that do not server as good occluders

Occluder Selection Size: not too small Redundant: detail polygons (clock on the wall) Complexity: Complex polygons are not preferred (why?) Done at run time – sort the occluders in depth, add them in order until reach the polygon count.

OPS View-independent Occluders X Z

OPS View-dependent Occluders

Occludders In practice, use traditional, static LOD’s More restrictive view-independent OPS Well-studied and available Low run-time overhead Shared with final rendering, no extra memory Area-preserving [Erikson 98]

Occluder selection At run time Visibility sampling Distance-based selection with a polygon budget Temporal coherence Visibility sampling Pre-compute visible objects on a 3-D grid Facilitates run-time selection

Implementation A two-pass framework Occluder LOD Rendering Selection View Scene Frustum Build Occlusion Database Culling Representation Occlusion LOD Culling

Results The city model

Results The city model 312,524 polygons Single CPU 5,000 occluder polygons Depth estimation buffer Opacity thresholds 1.0 Lighting; display lists; no triangle strips

Results

Results

Results Auxiliary Machine Room (AMR)

Results AMR 632,252 polygons 3 CPUs 25,000 occluder polygons No-background z-buffer Approximate culling (0.85 for level 64x64) LOD Lighting; display lists; no triangle strips

Results

Results

Results

Results The power plant model

Results The power plant model 15 million triangles 3 CPUs Visibility pre-processing on a 20x20 grid (~15min) No-background z-buffer 18,000 occluder polygons opacity thresholds from 0.85 and up LOD

Results

Conclusion Goals achieved Generality Speed-up Ease of implementation Any model, any occluder Occluder fusion Speed-up Accelerate interactive graphics Ease of implementation Configurability Robustness

HP hardware occlusion Extend OpenGL – add an OCCLUSION_MODE The bounding box of an object is scan converted A flag is set if any pixel of the BB faces is visible Only need to read back one flag, instead of the entire frame buffer Tradeoff – valuable rendering time is used to render useless BB faces (need to be used wisely) Reportedly 25%-100% speedup were observed

The Real World Scientific approaches often too complicated Science often uses models with hundreds of thousands of vertices, games don’t. (LOD) Game developers “pick” ideas from different algorithms Research has impact on hardware design!

Gaming Industry Parts of the Hierarchical Z-Buffer (HZB) are used sometimes Runtime-LOD is used as input for a simple HZB View Frustum Culling (VFC) is almost always used. Hierarchical Occlusion Maps introduce too much overhead for games, and the z-buffer is there anyway

The Real World (3) PSX-One doesn’t even have a z-buffer ATI’s Radeon has parts of a HZB (Called Hyper-Z) GForce2 only has a z-buffer GForce3 similar to Radeon, but supports HZB visibility query Dreamcasts Power-VR2 works pretty different (Infinite planes)

Conclusions Visibility algorithms are used in many different applications Occlusion culling Shadow calculations Radiosity Volumetric lights All these fields benefit from advances in visibility techniques

Recap Visibility culling: don’t render what can’t be seen Off-screen: view-frustum culling Z-buffered away: occlusion culling Cells and portals Works well for architectural models Teller: accurate, complex, a bit slow pfPortals: fast, cheap, easy

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Q: What do you think this is? Replace Z-buffer with a Z-pyramid Lowest level: full-resolution Z-buffer Higher levels: each pixel represents what? A: Maximum distance of geometry visible to the four pixels “underneath” it Q: How is this going to help?

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Idea: test polygon against highest level first If polygon is further than distance recorded in pixel, stop--it’s occluded If polygon is closer, recursively check against next lower level Amounts to hierarchical rasterization of the polygon, with early termination Must update higher levels as we go

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Z-pyramid exploits image-space coherence: polygon occluded in one pixel is probably occluded nearby HZB also exploits object-space coherence: polygons near an occluded polygon are probably occluded Q: How might you use object-space coherence?

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Subdivide scene with an octree All geometry in an octree node is contained by a cube Before rendering the contents of a node, “render” the faces of its cube If cube faces are occluded, ignore the entire node Query Z-pyramid to “render” cubes

Hierarchical Z-Buffer Exploit temporal coherence (What?) HZB operates at max efficiency when Z-pyramid is already built Idea: most polygons affecting Z-buffer (“nearest polygons”) are the same from frame to frame So start by rendering the polygons (octree nodes) visible last frame

Hansong Zhang Department of Computer Science UNC-Chapel Hill Hierarchical Occlusion Maps stolen by Dave Luebke from the Ph.D. Defense presentation of: Hansong Zhang Department of Computer Science UNC-Chapel Hill The title of my thesis is effective occlusion culling for the interactive display of large-scale models

Visibility Culling Discard objects not visible to the viewer View View-frustum culling Back-face culling View View Frustum Occlusion culling is actually one form of visibility culling. And visibility culling is to detect parts of a model that are not visible to the viewer and removing them from rendering. Visibility culling in turns belongs to a large category of primitive-reduction techniques, including level of detail, image impostors, and so on. The goal is to reduce the # of primitives you have to rendered so that rendering is accelerated. Simple forms of visibility culling include well-known techniques like backache culling and view frustum culling. Backache culling removes surfaces facing away from the viewer, and view frustum culling discards objects outside of the field of view. Further, non-backfacing surfaces that are inside of the field of view can still be invisible because they can be occluded by other objects. Occlusion culling algorithm seek to detect occluded objects like the yellow one, which is not so straight-forward as in VFW and BF. Point Occlusion culling

Hierarchical Occlusion Maps: Overview Blue parts: occluders Red parts: occludees This is a real-word example of occlusion culling. This model is the auxiliary machine room in a submarine. From the particular view indicated by the green lines, the blue parts occludes the red parts. And in this case, the red parts actually comprise more than 80 percent of the model, which mean over 80% of the model does not have to `rendered because of occlusion culling.

Effective Algorithms Generality Speed-up Portability Arbitrary models Significant, fast culling for interactive graphics Portability Few hardware assumptions Robustness I believe an occlusion culling algorithm has to satisfy three criteria to be called “effective”. it should be general, meaning it’s applicable to arbitrary models. It should not be limited to architectural models or whatever. It should be able to cull away significant portions of a model, and fast enough to accelerate interactive graphics. And finally, the algorithm should be portable across different graphics platforms. To do so it has to have few inherent assumptions on special hardware support. This doesn’t mean it should not be supported by hardware, actually the contrary is very true, it’s just that it should not have bizzare hardware assumptions without which it won’t work.

Thesis Statement By properly decomposing the occlusion-culling problem and efficiently representing occlusion, we can obtain effective algorithms and systems for occlusion culling. OK, having defined what I mean by effective algorithms, here’s my thesis statement:…

Observations Want to handle cumulative occlusion A B View Point There is a basic fact about occlusion culling which is that two occluders combined can occlude a lot more than the sum of what they occlude separately. This is illustrated in this figure with occluders A and B. Neither of them can occlude the green shapes. But when combined, they CAN occlude the green shapes. In other words, their cumulative occlusion is much greater than the sum of their separate occlusions. Because of this basic fact, an occlusion algorithm has to be able to combine occluders efficiently to be effective in general env. B View Point

Observations Want an occlusion representation (OR) Fast to compute Fast to use A The importance of cumulative occlusion immediately leads to a need for a separate representation for cumulative occlusion. For example, the combination of A and B can be represented by this poly-line. In 3-D, this could correspond a polygonal mesh. Computing such a mesh from arbitrary objects is very difficult and not robust, but it’s much easier to combine objects in the image space, as we’ll see later. B View Point

Observations Progressive occlusion culling Initialize OR to null for each object Occlusion test against OR if culled Discard object else Render object Update OR Occlusion culling can be progressive or multi-pass depending on how often the occlusion representation is updated. In a progressive algorithm, which is outlined in the box, occlusion representation is updated for each object. So basically for each object you test whether it’s occluded. If not, you render it, and merge the occlusion this object provides into the occlusion rep. Another thing is that you’d better consider the objects in roughly front-to-back order to maximize occlusion culling.

Observations Multi-pass occlusion culling Initialize OR to null; initialize PO to empty for each object Occlusion test against OR If culled Discard object else Render object Add object to PO if PO is large enough Update OR with objects in PO The set of potential occluders The problem with prog culling is there’re many updates, and each of them may have a substantial overhead. E.g if it involves reading the framebuffer, then the hardware setup takes pretty much time. So you may not be able to afford that many updates each frame, in which case you have to use multip culling. The difference is that for a visible object, you don’t update the OR immediately. Instead you put it in a potential occluder set. Then when the set is big enough, a update to OR is triggered and all the objects in the set are merged into the rep.at once. So it’s the old occlusion rep is used for testing multiple obj in a row, then it’s updated also for multiple objects at once. And the number of updates is defined as the # of passes. #passes = #updates

Observations Special case: one-pass occlusion culling Select occluders until PO is large enough Update (build) occlusion representation Occlusion culling & final rendering As a special case, one-pass occlusion culling has only one update to the occlusion rep per frame. So what you do is to select a bunch of occluders, build the OR with them, and then do occlusion culling. In practice, this is often what has to be used because of the high overhead of the updates to OR.

Problem Decomposition View Point Z X Y Look at this figure. Intuitively, in order for the yellow teapot to occlude the purple one from this particular view, there are two necessary conditions. The purple teapot’s screen projection must be inside that of the yellow teapot. And the purple one must be behind the yellow. Occlusion = depth + overlap

Problem Decomposition Verifying occlusion Overlap tests Based on representations for projection Depth tests Based on representations for depth So, these two conditions must be verified before we determine that the yellow teapot occlude the purple one. The projection condition is verified by overlap tests, and the depth condition verified by depth tests. To support these tests, we have separate representations for cumulative projection and depth. These representations are the most important things in our algorithm.

Occlusion Maps Rendered Image Occlusion Map

Occlusion Maps An occlusion map Corresponds to a screen subdivision Records average opacity for each partition Can be generated by rendering occluders Record pixel opacities (pixel coverage) Merge projections of occluders Represent occlusion in image-space An occlusion map corresponds to a uniform sub of the scr, each entry in the map records the average opacity

Occlusion Map Pyramid 64 x 64 32 x 32 16 x 16

Occlusion Map Pyramid

Occlusion Map Pyramid Analyzing cumulative projection A hierarchy of occlusion maps (HOM) Made by recursive averaging (low-pass filtering) Record average opacities for blocks of pixels Represent occlusion at multiple resolutions Construction accelerated by hardware Once we rendered occluders and generated an occlusion map, we can analyze the map by building a hierarchy, or pyramid, of occlusion maps. This is done by recursively averaging blocks of pixels. as is illustrated on the right hand slide. As pixels in a map represent larger areas on the screen, we get a higher-level view of the available occlusion. so the hierarchy actually represent occlusion in multiple resolusions. The construction of the hierarchy is readily supported by texture mapping hardware that supports bilinear interpolation, because the average operation is only a special of case bilinear interpolation.

Overlap Tests Problem: is the projection of tested object inside the cumulative projection of the occluders? Cumulative projection of occluders: the pyramid Projection of the tested object Conservative overestimation Bounding boxes (BB) Bounding rectangles (BR) of BB’s The problem here is to decide whether the screen projection of an potential occludee is completely in the cumulative projection of the occluders. So we just have to found out these projections and compare them. The cum proj of occluders has been represented as the occlusion map pyramid, and now we have to find the screen projection of the potential occludee. because actual scan-conversion is too expensive, I have to conservatively estimate the projection. The projection of bounding box is such an estimation, but projecting the bounding box is still too expensive. So I simply use bounding rectangle of the bounding box as an estimation. Since the cumulative projection is represented by the occlusion map hierarchy, the overlap test is to compare the potential occluder’s projection against the map hierarchy. for this purpose we have to find the screen projection of the potential occludee. because actual scan-conversion is too expensive, we simply use the screen space bounding rectangle of the occludee bounding box to overestimate the projection. Why we have a hierarchy of map is because it accelerates the overlap test. If at a high level a pixel is already opaque, we don’t have to go into subpixels. If not, we descend into subpixels for further tests. [why we have a hierarchy of maps is because it accelerate the overlap test. the hierarchy is built with an average operator, meaning if a high-level pixel is completely opaque, then all the subpixels must also be completely opaque, so we don’t have to further check the subpixels. Otherwise we have to recursively descend into subpixels for further checking.] The representation of occlusion in multiple resolutions has resulted in three flavors of early termination in the recursive test. Early termination means we can decide at a high level the result of the overlap test.

Overlap Tests The basic algorithm Given: HOM pyramid; the object to be tested Compute BR and the initial level in the pyramid for each pixel touched by the BR if pixel is fully opaque continue else if level = 0 return FALSE descend... Here is the basic algorithm for the hierarchical overlap test between an object and the occlusion map pyramid. First we compute a bounding rectangle and the initial level in the pyramid. then Why we have a hierarchy of map is because it accelerates the overlap test. If at a high level a pixel is already opaque, we don’t have to go into it descendant pixels in the finer level. If not, we descend into subpixels for further tests. [why we have a hierarchy of maps is because it accelerate the overlap test. the hierarchy is built with an average operator, meaning if a high-level pixel is completely opaque, then all the subpixels must also be completely opaque, so we don’t have to further check the subpixels. Otherwise we have to recursively descend into subpixels for further checking.]

Overlap Tests Evaluating opacity: early termination Conservative rejection Aggressive approximate culling Predictive rejection We have seen the basic algorithm, but in many cases we may choose to terminate the test early before the full test is carried out. We can do this because the pyramid provide a view of occlusion at multiple resolutions, so that opacity can be evaluation at a high-level using the coarse maps. We will discuss three flavors of early termination:...

Conservative Rejection A low-opacity pixel does not correspond to many high-opacity pixels at finer levels The transparency threshold 1 1 1 1 First comes conservative early termination. If a pixel touched by the rectangle has really low opacity, then we know that even if we descend into finer maps, there’s little probability to find plenty of high opacity. So we can simply stop and and conclude that the object is not occluded. The transparency threshold defines that “really low opacity”, below which a pixel is considered transparent. 1 0.8 1 1 0.9 0.9 0.1 0.2 0.3

Aggressive Approximate Culling Ignoring barely-visible objects Small holes in or among objects To ignore the small holes LPF suppresses noise — holes “dissolve” Thresholding: regard “very high” opacity as fully opaque The opacity threshold: the opacity above which a pixel is considered to be fully opaque

Aggressive Approximate Culling 1 2 3 4

Aggressive Approximate culling Further descent not necessary when fully opaque Tests terminated before holes are reached Need different opacity thresholds for each level

Predictive Rejection Terminate the test knowing it must fail later...

Summary: Levels of Visibility The continuum between being visible and non-visible Occlusion Maps Potential Occludees Almost transparent (low opacity) Almost opaque (high opacity) Almost visible Almost non-visible

Resolving Depth What’s left of the occlusion test? B A “A occludes B” = “A’s projection contains B’s” + ? B does not occlude any part of A B A Another interpretation...

Resolving Depth Depth representations Define a boundary beyond which an object overlapping occluders is definitely occluded Conservative estimates: A single plane Depth estimation buffer No-background z-buffer

A single plane … at the farthest vertex of the occluders Image plane The plane Occluders The point with nearest depth Viewing direction A This object passes the depth test

Depth Estimation Buffer Like a low-res depth buffer Uniform subdivision of the screen A plane for each partition Defines the far boundary Updates (i.e. computing depth representation) Occluder bounding rectangle at farthest depth Depth tests Occudee bounding rectangle at nearest depth

Depth Estimation Buffer Transformed view-frustum Image plane D. E. B. Bounding rectangle at farthest depth Bounding rectangle at nearest depth Viewing direction B Occluders A

Depth Estimation Buffer Trade-off Advantages Removes need for strict depth sorting Speed Portability Disadvantages Conservative far boundary Requires good bounding volumes

No-Background Z-Buffer The z-buffer from occluder rendering... is by itself an full occlusion representation has to be modified to support our depth tests “Removing” background depth values Replace them the “foreground” depth values Captures the near boundary

No-Background Z-Buffer Transformed view-frustum Image plane D. E. B Occluders N. B. Z Viewing direction A Objects passing the depth tests

No-Background Z-Buffer Trade-off Advantages Captures the near boundary Less sensitive to bounding boxes Disadvantages Assumes quickly accessible z-buffer Resolution same as occlusion maps (however…)

Occluder Selection Occlusion-preserving simplification (OPS) Run-time selection Visibility pre-processing

OPS View-independent OPS X Z

OPS View-dependent OPS

OPS In practice, use traditional, static LOD’s More restrictive view-independent OPS Well-studied and available Low run-time overhead Shared with final rendering, no extra memory Area-preserving [Erikson 98] Conservative OPS (COPS)...

Occluder selection At run time Visibility sampling Distance-based selection with a polygon budget Temporal coherence Visibility sampling Pre-compute visible objects on a 3-D grid Facilitates run-time selection

Implementation A two-pass framework Occluder LOD Rendering Selection View Scene Frustum Build Occlusion Database Culling Representation Occlusion LOD Culling

Implementation Pipelining OccSelN OccSelN+1 OccSelN+2 OccSelN+3 FinalDrawN+1 OccDrawN FinalDrawN OccDrawN+1 FinalDrawN+1 OccDrawN+2 CullN CullN+1 CullN+2

Implementation Uses bounding volume hierarchy Active layers of the pyramid: 4x4 - 64x64 Resolutions Occluder rendering - 256x256 D. E. B. - 64x64 Test platforms SGI Onyx II, 4 195Mhz R10000, InfiniteReality SGI Onyx I, 4 250MHz R4400, InfiniteReality

Results The city model

Results The city model 312,524 polygons Single CPU 5,000 occluder polygons Depth estimation buffer Opacity thresholds 1.0 Lighting; display lists; no triangle strips

Results

Results

Results Auxiliary Machine Room (AMR)

Results AMR 632,252 polygons 3 CPUs 25,000 occluder polygons No-background z-buffer Approximate culling (0.85 for level 64x64) LOD Lighting; display lists; no triangle strips

Results

Results

Results

Results The power plant model

Results The power plant model 15 million triangles 3 CPUs Visibility pre-processing on a 20x20 grid (~15min) No-background z-buffer 18,000 occluder polygons opacity thresholds from 0.85 and up LOD

Results

Conclusion Goals achieved Generality Speed-up Ease of implementation Any model, any occluder Occluder fusion Speed-up Accelerate interactive graphics Ease of implementation Configurability Robustness

Conclusion Main contributions: Problem decomposition Overlap tests and depth tests Occlusion representations Occlusion maps Depth Estimation Buffer No-Background Z-Buffer

Conclusion Main contributions Hierarchical occlusion maps Analysis of occlusion at multiple resolutions High-level opacity estimation Aggressive approximate culling Levels of visibility The first occlusion culling algorithm for general models and interactive 3-D graphics

Future Work Other implementations... PC’s and games How much can be done in software? Integration into hardware More progressive updates to occlusion representation Less conservative culling Wide-spread use of occlusion culling

Early Splat Elimination Need: splat visibility test a voxel is only visible if the volume material in front is not opaque screen occluded voxel: does not pass visibility test wall of occluding voxels occlusion map = opacity image

Visibility Test - Naive Check opacity of every pixel within footprint number of pixels to be checked is large voxel footprint opaque area voxel kernel opacity buffer

Visibility Test - Efficient IEEE Trans. Vis. and Comp. Graph. ‘99 Compute occlusion map after each sheet-buffer compositing project do not project opacity  threshold opacity < threshold occlusion map opacity = 0

Early Splat Elimination - Results