Interactive Out-Of-Core Texturing Using Point-Sampled Textures

The visualization of huge 3D objects becomes available on common workstations thanks to highly optimized data-structures and out-of-core frameworks for rendering. However, the editing, and in particular, the texturing of such objects is still a challenging task, since usual methods for optimized rendering are not easily amenable to interactive modification. In this paper, we introduce the idea of point-sampled textures, and show how to interactively texture such a huge model at various scales, without any parameterization. An adaptive in-core point-based approximated geometry is first created by employing an efficient out-of-core point-sampling algorithm. This simplified geometry is then used for an interactive and multi-scale point-based texturing. Finally, a feature-preserving kernel is used to convert the point-based model into a global 3D texture which can be applied back on the initial huge geometry. Our technique thus provides a flexible tool to generate, edit and apply size-independent textures to a wide range of huge 3D objects thanks to point-based methods. Example: Starting from a large (8M polygons here) out-of-core geometry (left), our technique generates an adaptive in-core point-based approximated geometry (150k samples) that is used for interactive multi-scale texturing (middle). The so-defined “point-sampled texture” is then upscaled with a feature-preserving kernel, and applied on the initial geometry (right).