A New Approach to Accelerate NURBS Surface Rendering on GPU

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a novel algorithm for the real-time rendering of NURBS surfaces using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The GPU is used to compute the basis function and the derivatives of basis function of a NURBS surface in real time using the parallel computing power of the GPU. The results are used to combine with the control points to obtain the exact positions and corresponding normal vectors on NURBS surfaces. Thus, the shading effect also can be calculated by using the exact positions and normal vectors. In the proposed algorithm, both trimmed and untrimmed surfaces can be rendered. According to our experimental results, NURBS surface rendering with less meshes can still produce the evaluation of the exact surfaces.

Keywords:

• NURBS surfaces
• Graphics Processing Unit