Rasterization algorithms

CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics

Autumn Quarter, 2008
Marc Levoy
Lecture notes for Thursday, October 9 (second half of class)
Table of contents:
Overview of 3D rendering pipeline
Line drawing
Assumptions 1.
Brute force algorithm 2.
DDA algorithm 3.
Bresenham algorithm 4.
What do real workstations use? 5.
Polygon scan conversion
Assumptions 1.
Algorithm 2.
Which pixels to ll? 3.
An ecient algorithm for triangles 4.
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Except for assumptions 1 through 4 immediately below, the following section on line
drawing was skipped in class. It is included here for completeness. You will not be held
responsible for it on exams.
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The algorithm that follows, which is taken from section 3.6 in the textbook, handles
self-intersecting (e.g. bow-tie) or degenerate polygons naturally, even polygons with
holes. As mentioned in handout #7, you will need to handle the rst two types in
project #2, but not the third. By the way, handling these cases by decomposing them
into triangles is not allowed, at least for the project.
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Note that steps 3.2 (remove edges) and 3.2.5 (sort the active edge table) should be
performed before step 3.3 (ll the scanline), despite the physical order in which they
appear in the list above. Re-sorting the active edge table seems to happen frequently,
but it typically isn't expensive. In particular, if you have introduced a new edge in step
3.1, then you will need to move it to its correct position in the table. However, this is
only done at events, in fact only once per edge of the polygon. Even if you have not
introduced an edge, you must look through the table for edges that may be out of order
because they have crossed after the x increments of the previous step 3.5; these edges
will need to be swapped in the table. This check must be done on every scanline, not
just at events, but in the vast majority of cases no swapping will be necessary, so the
cost of this check is low. As I mentioned in class, manipulations to the edge tables
typically represent a small fraction of the cost of a rasterizer. Most of the time is spent
in step 3.3, lling pixels.
By the way, the suggested code for updating the X-coordinate in step 3.5 is an
integer-only solution, lifted from Bresenhham's algorithm. If you're willing to use
oating-point arithmetic, then the increment becomes just the (oating-point) slope,
with no if-test necessary.
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In general, a polygon rasterizer should ll only and all sample positions that fall inside
polygon edges. In previous versions of project #2, we also required students to
rasterize their polygons such that they meshed perfectly, i.e. with no holes or
doubly-drawn pixels. To satisfy this requirement, care must be taken when sample
positions coincide with polygon edges or vertices, as discussed above. This year, we do
not require this. Thus, the only rule you must obey in your project this year is that all
sample positions that are strictly inside a primitive, i.e. not coincident with a vertex or
edge, should be lled, and all sample positions that are strictly outside a primitive
should not be lled. This means that in the sliver polygon above, you should not ll any
samples in the second column, immediately above the word "gap". Whether you ll the
sample at the leftmost vertex is up to you. After anti-aliasing, assuming you use enough
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supersamples, the left tip of the polygon should look approximately the same whether
you do or not. In particular, it should like like a knife-edge thinner than a pixel. This
apparent thinness arises from the pixel under the vertex having a color that is a blend
of the polygon's color and the background color.
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The algorithm described in section II is very general, and it's useful from a didactic
standpoint to see how a general plane-sweep algorithm works, but what do real
graphics cards use? The answer is proprietary, and it may vary among manufacturers,
but at the least they always decompose polygons into triangles. Shown above is one
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algorithm for fast rasterization of triangles. A dierent algorithm is: "Triangle scan
conversion using 2d homogeneous coordinates", by Marc Olano and Trey Greer, in
Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware, 1997. Since I
didn't cover these algorithms in class, I'm not holding you responsible for them.
[email protected]
Copyright 2008 Marc Levoy
Last update: October 14, 2008 06:36:51 PM
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