Z3: An Economical Hardware Technique for High-Quality Antialiasing and Order-Independent Transparency

8/25/99


Click here to start


Table of Contents

Z3: An Economical Hardware Technique for High-Quality Antialiasing and Order-Independent Transparency

Order-Dependent Transparency

Order-Dependent Transparency

Order-Dependent Transparency

Order-Independent (O-I) Transparency

A-buffer Methods for O-I Transparency

How Can Aliasing Be Eliminated?

Supersampling

Sparse Supersampling

8x8 Sparse Supersampling

Problems with Sparse Supersampling

Compact Z Representations

Visibility Errors

The Z3 Data Structure

Z3 Algorithm

Z3 Block Diagram

Occlusion Check Stage

Fragment Insertion Stage

Final Color Computation

Fragment Merging

Limited Precision Z-slopes

Maximum Potential Errors Due to Compact Slope Format

Reduced Precision Slopes: The Bottom Line

Pixel Complexity of Opaque Test Case

Complexity of Transparent Test Case

Original Aliased Image

2x2 “Antialiasing”

Low-end SGI Infinite Reality

High-end Infinite Reality

16x16 Sparse Z3

Sum of Squares of Per-Pixel Errors for Opaque Test Case vs. # of Fragments

Video

Errors for Transparent Test Case vs. # of Fragments

Additional Memory Requirements

Conclusions

Author: Norm Jouppi and Chun-Fa Chang

Other information:
Presentation for SIGGRAPH Eurographics 1999 Hardware Workshop in Computer Graphics