Space Carving on 3D Graphics Hardware

We describe fast voxel coloring using programmable 3D graphics hardware based on texture mapping capabilities of modern graphics accelerators. In contrast to previous approaches, where graphics hardware is only partially employed to speed up voxel coloring, our implementation performs the reconstruction procedure entirely on the graphics processing unit. Therefore, any expensive transfer of data from graphics memory is avoided. Additionally, the reconstructed volumetric dataset can be immediately displayed for visual feedback to the user. Our system performs voxel coloring at interactive rates for scene resolutions of 256×256×128. Furthermore, we present extensions to perform the more general space carving approach in graphics hardware. Scene models created with space carving are typically available after a few seconds.