Real-time Bas-Relief Generation from Depth-and-Normal Maps on GPU

Abstract

To design a bas-relief from a 3D scene is an inherently interactive task in many scenarios. The user normally needs to get instant feedback to select a proper viewpoint. However, current methods are too slow to facilitate this interaction. This paper proposes a two-scale bas-relief modeling method, which is computationally efficient and easy to produce different styles of bas-reliefs. The input 3D scene is first rendered into two textures, one recording the depth information and the other recording the normal information. The depth map is then compressed to produce a base surface with level-of-depth, and the normal map is used to extract local details with two different schemes. One scheme provides certain freedom to design bas-reliefs with different visual appearances, and the other provides a control over the level of detail. Finally, the local feature details are added into the base surface to produce the final result. Our approach allows for real-time computation due to its implementation on graphics hardware. Experiments with a wide range of 3D models and scenes show that our approach can effectively generate digital bas-reliefs in real time.