Efficient Ray Tracing of Micro-Meshes
P.J. Hibbs (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
R. Marroquim – Mentor (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
C. Vuik – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
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Abstract
This thesis presents the design and implementation of a GPU-based ray tracer capable of rendering NVIDIA's micro-meshes. The method operates entirely in two dimensions by projecting both rays and triangles onto a 2D domain. Within this domain, the projected ray traverses the micro-triangles, starting at subdivision level 0. The triangles are then recursively subdivided until the finest subdivision level is reached, at which point the micro-triangle intersected by the original 3D ray is identified. To accelerate traversal, the approach employs height field ray tracing, which restricts subdivision to regions where it is strictly necessary. In addition, the proposed method demonstrates a reduced memory footprint compared to traditional ray tracing, while maintaining acceptable runtime performance. Memory savings of up to approximately 50% are achieved relative to a fully tessellated representation.