Subdivision Volume Splatting

Abstract

Volumetric Subdivision (VS) is a powerful paradigm that enables volumetric sculpting and realistic volume deformations that give rise to the concept of "virtual clay". In VS, volumes are commonly represented as a space-filling set of deformed polyhedra, which can be further decomposed into a mesh of tetrahedra for rendering. Images can then be generated via tetrahedral projection or raycasting. A current shortcoming in VS-based operations is the need for a very high level of subdivision to represent fine detail in the mesh and to obtain a high-fidelity visualization. However, we have discovered that the subdivision process itself can be closely simulated with radial basis functions (RBFs), making it possible to replace the finer subdivision levels by a coarser aggregation of RBF kernels. This reduction to a simplified assembly of RBFs subsequently enables interactive rendering of volumetric subdivision shapes within a GPU-based volume splatting framework.