Nonlinear Texture Mapping Techniques For

S As graphics hardware is available on most PCs these days, hardware-assisted real-time rendering becomes more important in many applications, such as games or virtual reality. Texture mapping is also important in graphics rendering, because it gives much visual detail without modeling of complex geometry. Conventional texture mapping by graphics hardware relies on the linear interpolations of the texture coordinates inside the triangles. Although this approximation works fine for most applications, the nonlinear modeling of texture coordinates is needed in some applications. This dissertation discusses how to model and implement nonlinear texture mapping with graphics hardware. Two applications using nonlinear texture parameterizations are introduced. They are cylindrical projective texture mapping and interactive image warping. Nonlinear texture mapping for these applications are modeled and implemented using environment mapped bump mapping (EMBM) capability and programmable pixel shader. By the decomposition of the nonlinear texture parameterization into the linear and nonlinear components, nonlinear residuals can be controlled by EMBM or pixel shader, while the linear components are used as texture coordinates for the conventional texture mapping.