Volumetric Representation from Depth Renderings for Real-Time Rendering
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Solution Overview
Problem
High complexity digital objects are impractical for real-time rendering on mobile devices or in game engines due to their complexity, requiring significant simplification, which is currently achieved through costly and time-consuming manual remodeling that often neglects important render-time details.
Innovation Solution
An image-based depth reconstruction method that uses flat 2D renders to generate a reduced complexity volumetric representation of digital objects, retaining render-time details like displacement maps and procedural geometries, without requiring the original 3D mesh information, and can be performed in a substantially automated process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If manual remodeling is used to simplify digital objects, then complexity is reduced, but cost and time consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical remodeling process with an automated image processing system. The system uses depth rendering and mesh generation algorithms to automatically simplify digital objects, substituting human artists' manual work with computational processes that can handle complexity reduction efficiently and at scale without the associated labor costs and time constraints.
2Manufacturing precision
If high complexity digital objects are used, then visual quality is improved, but real-time rendering capability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by selectively preserving only the essential visual features needed for real-time rendering while removing excessive geometric complexity. The depth rendering technique captures the essential shape and form information at multiple levels of detail, allowing the system to maintain visual quality for real-time applications without retaining the full complexity of the original high-polygon models.
3Device complexity
If automated decimation is applied to source geometry, then complexity is reduced, but render-time details are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by performing depth rendering and creating simplified representations before the actual rendering process. The system pre-processes the high complexity digital objects by generating depth maps and simplified meshes that capture essential visual information, so that when the simplified model is used in real-time rendering, the important visual details are already preserved in the pre-computed depth information.
Data Source
AI summary
An image processing system includes a computing platform having processing hardware, a display, and a system memory storing a software code. The processing hardware executes the software code to receive a digital object, surround the digital object with virtual cameras oriented toward the digital object, render, using each one of the virtual cameras, a depth map identifying a distance of that one of the virtual cameras from the digital object, and generate, using the depth map, a volumetric perspective of the digital object from a perspective of that one of the virtual cameras, resulting in multiple volumetric perspectives of the digital object. The processing hardware further executes the software code to merge the multiple volumetric perspectives of the digital object to form a volumetric representation of the digital object, and to convert the volumetric representation of the digital object to a renderable form.