Blister: GPU-based rendering of Boolean combinations of free-form triangulated shapes
John Hable, Jarek Rossignac
In ACM Transactions on Graphics, 24(3), August 2005.
Abstract: By combining depth peeling with a linear formulation of a Boolean expression called Blist, the Blister algorithm renders an arbitrary CSG model of n primitives in at most k steps, where k is the number of depth-layers in the arrangement of the primitives. Each step starts by rendering each primitive to produce candidate surfels on the next depth-layer. Then, it renders the primitives again, one at a time, to classify the candidate surfels against the primitive and to evaluate the Boolean expression directly on the GPU. Since Blist does not expand the CSG expression into a disjunctive (sum-of-products) form, Blister has O(kn) time complexity. We explain the Blist formulation while providing algorithms for CSG-to-Blist conversion and Blist-based parallel surfel classification. We report real-time performance for nontrivial CSG models. On hardware with an 8-bit stencil buffer, we can render all possible CSG expressions with 3909 primitives.
Keyword(s): CSG, GPU, depth peeling, graphics hardware
Article URL: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1073204.1073306
BibTeX format:
@article{Hable:2005:BGR,
  author = {John Hable and Jarek Rossignac},
  title = {Blister: GPU-based rendering of Boolean combinations of free-form triangulated shapes},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics},
  volume = {24},
  number = {3},
  pages = {1024--1031},
  month = aug,
  year = {2005},
}
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