filename     : Gue08.pdf
entry        : article
conference   : Eurographics 2008, Crete, Greece, 14-18 April 2008
pages        : 653-662
year         : 2008
month        : April
title        : Dynamic Sampling and Rendering of Algebraic Point Set Surfaces
subtitle     :
author       : Gael Guennebaud, Marcel Germann, Markus Gross.
booktitle    : Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics 2008)
ISSN/ISBN    : 0167-7055
editor       : D. Cohen-Or and P. Slavik
publisher    : The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing 2008
publ.place   : Oxford, UK
volume       : 27
issue        : 2
language     : english
keywords     : Point-based graphics, surface representations, real-time rendering, GPU programming.
abstract     : Algebraic Point Set Surfaces (APSS) define a smooth surface from a set of points using local moving least-squares (MLS) fitting of algebraic spheres. In this paper we first revisit the spherical fitting problem and provide a new, more generic solution that includes intuitive parameters for curvature control of the fitted spheres. As a second contribution we present a novel real-time rendering system of such surfaces using a dynamic up-sampling strategy combined with a conventional splatting algorithm for high quality rendering. Our approach also includes a new view dependent geometric error tailored to efficient and adaptive up-sampling of the surface. One of the key features of our system is its high degree of flexibility that enables us to achieve high performance even for highly dynamic data or complex models by exploiting temporal coherence at the primitive level. We also address the issue of efficient spatial search data structures with respect to construction, access and GPU friendliness. Finally, we present an efficient parallel GPU implementation of the algorithms and search structures.