Point-based Computer graphics

摘要

With Moore's law unquestioned, computer graphics researchers are witnessing ever more powerful computers deal with increasingly complex and detailed geometric objects. However, the challenges of managing, processing, and manipulating very large polygonal-mesh connectivity information have led many leading researchers to question the future utility of polygons as the fundamental primitive. Recently, point primitives have emerged as an alternative that reduce the cost of managing geometric shape descriptions to a minimum. Points are essentially samples of a 3D object, and point-based representations merely consist of unstructured sets of such samples. Points constitute discrete building blocks of object geometry and appearance―much as pixels are the digital elements for images. Points also naturally arise as the raw data produced by modern 3D digital photography and 3D scanning systems, which acquire both geometry and appearance of complex, real-world objects.