Local Surface Approximation Contours for Virtual Reality Stylisation

Abstract

Line art is an illustrative technique with a wide use in education and art. In the context of image abstraction, its potential for increasing memorisation and recognition has been demonstrated, which motivates its use in scientific illustrations. While much work has focused on the conversion of 3D models into a line-art representation, there is a lack of solutions for virtual reality. Applying existing methods for each eye independently turns out to fall short due to cost constraints, distracting artifacts due to inconsistencies, or limitations regarding the input geometry. To address these limitations, we present a contour renderer for virtual reality. It operates in screen space, making it flexible, yet it relies on a local surface approximation combined with a registration error metric for robustness. Inconsistent occluding contours are continuously merged, and lines with no correspondence between both eyes are culled. The method is easy to implement, highly efficient even for high-resolution imagery, and, according to user evaluations, avoids the noticeable artifacts produced by existing work.