A Hybrid Hardware-Accelerated Algorithm for High Quality Rendering of Visual Hulls

In this paper, a novel hybrid algorithm is presented for the fast construction and high-quality rendering of visual hulls. We combine the strengths of two complementary hardware-accelerated approaches: direct constructive solid geometry (CSG) rendering and texture mapping-based visual cone trimming. The former approach completely eliminates the aliasing artifacts inherent in the latter, whereas the rapid speed of the latter approach compensates for the performance deficiency of the former. Additionally, a new view-dependent texture mapping method is proposed. This method makes efficient use of graphics hardware to perform per-fragment blending weight computation, which yields better rendering quality. Our rendering algorithm is integrated in a distributed system that is capable of acquiring synchronized video streams and rendering visual hulls in real time or at interactive frame rates from up to eight reference views.