Abstract
For virtual reality, virtual manufacturing system, or simulation based design, we need to visualize very large and complex 3D models which are comprising of very large number of polygons. To overcome the limited hardware performance and to attain smooth realtime visualization, there have been many researches about algorithms which reduce the number of polygons to be processed by graphics hardware. One of these algorithms, occlusion culling is a method of rejecting the objects which are not visible because they are occluded by other objects, and then passing only the visible objects to graphics hardware. Existing occlusion culling algorithms have some shortcomings such as the required long preprocessing time, the limitation of occluder shape, or the need for special hardware implementation. In this study, an efficient occlusion culling algorithm is proposed. The proposed algorithm reads and analyzes Z-buffer of graphics hardware using Microsoft DirectX, and then determines each object's visibility. This proposed algorithm can speed up visualization by reading Z-buffer using DirectX which can access hardware directly compared to OpenGL, by reading only the region to which each object is projected instead of reading the whole Z-Buffer, and the proposed algorithm can perform more exact visibility test by using simplified model instead of using bounding box. For evaluation, the proposed algorithm was applied to very large polygonal models. And smooth realtime visualization was attained.
