Non Polygonal Rendering in GL

Hello,

I’ve been working with parametric surfaces and sampling to create polygons, but ideally I could directly ray-trace an all-parametric scene (ref: Generative Modeling, Snyder 1992).

Texture mapping has become synonymous with Images, but this is an unnecessary step also if you have a level of detail high enough.

Once the number of polygons exceeds the number of pixels in the window, a point sampled method is superior provided that you have the data represented implicitly versus stored as polygon vertices. It also offers a tremendous advantage in size if you don’t have to load images from CD and pump thousands of vertices. (Ex. scene: a forest during a wind storm)

Will future versions of GL (or perhaps clever Vertex Programming) support this type of rendering in software or has the textured polygon been granted immortal status?

Thanks,

Neil McLaughlin

>>>>Will future versions of GL (or perhaps clever Vertex Programming) support this type of rendering in software or has the textured polygon been granted immortal status?<<<<<<

For the foreseeable future, yes. OGL is just a basic polygon rendering machine. Doing what you suggest is certainly possible by OGL but will probably not get implemented any time soon.

What you are talking about is LOD (level of detail) for models and there are many ways to do LOD.

V-man