Computer Graphics 14Surface Detection Methods.ppt

Computer Graphics 14:Surface Detection Methods Contents Today we will start to take a look at visible surface detection techniques: Why surface detection? Back face detection Depth-buffer method A-buffer method Scan-line method Why? We must determine what is visible within a scene from a chosen viewing position For 3D worlds this is known as visible surface detection or hidden surface elimination Two Main Approaches Visible surface detection algorithms are broadly classified as: Object Space Methods: Compares objects and parts of objects to each other within the scene definition to determine which surfaces are visible Image Space Methods: Visibility is decided point-by-point at each pixel position on the projection plane Image space methods are by far the more common Back-Face Detection The simplest thing we can do is find the faces on the backs of polyhedra and discard them Back-Face Detection (cont…) We know from before that a point (x, y, z) is behind a polygon surface if: where A, B, C D are the plane parameters for the surface This can actually be made even easier if we organise things to suit ourselves Back-Face Detection (cont…) Ensure we have a right handed system with the viewing direction along the negative z-axis Now we can simply say that if the z component of the polygon’s normal is less than zero the surface cannot be seen Back-Face Detection (cont…) In general back-face detection can be expected to eliminate about half of the polygon surfaces in a scene from further visibility tests More complicated surfaces though scupper us! We need better techniques to handle these kind of situations Depth-Buffer Method Compares surface depth values throughout a scene for each pixel position on the projection plane Usually applied to scenes only containing polygons As depth values can be computed easily, this tends to be very fast Also often called the z-buffer method Depth-Buffer Method (cont…) Depth-Buffer Algorithm Initialise the depth buffer and frame