Resolution Independent NURBS Curves Rendering using Programmable Graphics Pipeline

Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) are widely used, especially in the design and manufacturing industry, for their precision and ability to represent complex shapes. These properties come at the cost of being computationally expensive for rendering. Many methods have tackled NURBS rendering by view based approximations and/or heavy preprocessing. We present a method for resolution independent rendering of curves and shapes, defined by NURBS, by utilizing the high parallelism of the programmable graphics hardware. The computation of the curve is processed directly on the GPU, without the need for complex preprocessing and/or additional storage of the basis functions as textures. Our method enables rendering of a complex NURBS shape in precise form, by defining only the curve’s hull. We also present a method to enhance the performance of the preprocessing stage, mainly triangulation, that fits our requirements and speeds up the process. With optimized preprocessing and using only the mobile profile of the programmable graphics pipeline, we achieve a fast and resolution independent method for rendering NURBS based 2D shapes on desktop and mobile devices.