Lazy Incremental Computation for Efficient Scene Graph Rendering

Abstract

In order to provide a highly performant rendering system while maintaining a scene graph structure with a high level of abstraction, we introduce improved rendering caches, that can be updated incrementally without any scene graph traversal. The basis of this novel system is the use of a dependency graph, that can be synthesized from the scene graph and links all sources of changes to the affected parts of rendering caches. By using and extending concepts from w incremental computation we minimize the computational overhead for performing the necessary updates due to changes in any inputs. This makes it possible to provide a high-level semantic scene graph, while retaining the opportunity to apply a number of known optimizations to the rendering caches even for dynamic scenes. Our evaluation shows that the resulting rendering system is highly competitive and provides good rendering performance for scenes ranging from completely static geometry all the way to completely dynamic geometry.