Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Computer graphics processing – Three-dimension
Patent
1998-02-23
2000-07-11
Zimmerman, Mark K.
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Computer graphics processing
Three-dimension
345422, 345419, G06T 1540, G06T 1570
Patent
active
06088035&
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a method for displaying successive frames of a graphics model on a computer screen.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The animation picture industry was founded on the realization that animation or apparent movement could be achieved by successively presenting to the human eye still images at high frequency, each representing a small, incremental movement with respect to its predecessor. Providing the frequency at which the still images are presented to the human eye exceeds the so-called "frequency of fusion", the eye is unable to detect that it is, in reality, seeing only discrete images and the eye-brain combination labors under the illusion that it is seeing a continuous, moving picture.
Modern graphics systems which exploit this fact abound and what all such systems have in common is the capture of successive frames of digital information which are then displayed on a suitable display screen at sufficiently high frequency. When it is desired to display such images at high resolution, then, of course, the display monitor itself must possess a large number of pixels and this in turn demands that each displayed frame of digital image data requires a large volume of data. In practice, this means not only that large memories are required for storing the digital image data but, more importantly, that very fast processing is required in order to be able to process each frame of image data presented to the display monitor at a rate no less than the frequency of fusion, i.e. about 30 Hz.
A graphics model is generally constructed from static objects representing a fixed background scene and one or more dynamic objects which move within the fixed background scene. In practice, a moving picture is derived by generating a large number of frames of pixel data each representing slight incremental movements between one frame and its successor. The visible pixels in each frame represent the instantaneous view of an object as seen by an observer. This instantaneous view is subject to change between successive frames owing to the movement of the dynamic objects within the static scene and changing perspective of the viewer.
Visibility calculation is one of the most important tasks in computer graphics. Given a geometric model of a scene and a viewpoint, the goal of visibility calculation (also known as hidden surface removal) is to find which parts of the model are visible from the viewpoint. The performance of the visibility calculation stage can largely affect that of the entire rendering process because if an element of the geometric model is found to be invisible then various other time-consuming calculations (such as shading, for example) do not have to be performed for this element.
It should be noted, however, that whilst visibility calculation is normally a precursor to displaying graphic images, the display of such images is independent of the visibility calculation and not always performed. Moreover, the enhanced display of graphic images may not be the only consideration which leads to the desire to speed up visibility calculation of graphic images. For example, a graphic model may be stored in a computer which is remote from a user and dynamic changes to the graphic model may be performed by an operator located at the remote computer. Such changes must be reflected in the model stored locally at the user's site by sending update information to the user's computer so that his version of the graphic model can be modified. In such case, it is desirable to minimize as far as possible the volume of update data which needs to be communicated to the user's computer, since the communication channel (typically a network) is usually the major bottleneck in computer systems responsible for degradation of system performance. It may also be the case that the updated graphic model at the user's site is not itself displayed but forms the basis for further computation and processing, for example, as part of a simulation machine. In other words, in all cases the speed of renderi
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Gotsman Graig J.
Sudarsky Oded
Cao Van
Virtue Ltd.
Zimmerman Mark K.
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