Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics Library

Multi-scale Line Drawings from 3D Meshes

Author(s): Alex Ni, Kyuman Jeong, Seungyong Lee, Lee Markosian.
Technical Report: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, No. CSE-TR-510-05, July, 2005.
[BibTeX]

Abstract:
We present an effective method for automatically selecting the appropriate scale of shape features that are depicted when rendering a 3D mesh in the style of a line drawing. The method exhibits good temporal coherence when introducing and removing lines as needed under changing viewing conditions, and it is fast because the calculations are carried out entirely on the graphics card. The strategy is to pre-compute a sequence of filtered versions of the mesh that eliminate (via a signal processing technique) shape features at progressively larger scales. Each mesh in the sequence retains the original number of vertices and connectivity, providing a direct correspondence between meshes. The mesh sequence is loaded onto the graphics card, and at run-time a vertex program interpolates positions and curvature values between two of the meshes, depending on distance to the camera. A pixel program then renders silhouettes and suggestive contours to produce the line drawing. In this way, fine shape features are depicted over nearby surfaces, while appropriately coarse-scaled features are depicted over more distant regions.