Preliminaries - Real-Time Rendering: Computer Graphics with Control Engineering - page 9

Input

Input Assembler

Vertex Shader

Geometry
Shader

Stream
Output

Rasteriser

Pixel Shader

Output Merger

FIGURE 2.3 Programmable rendering pipeline (DirectX 11).

just positional information in 3D space but continuous depth data with additional
dimensions and possibly its materials information as well. This type of spatial data
is commonly used in scientific and medical work where cross-sectional information
is important for evaluation and study. Volume rendering produces the exterior and
the interior look of an object, usually with visual cues such as transparency and color
differentiation. The image generation process considers the absorption of light along
the ray path to the eye and volume rendering algorithms can be designed to avoid
visual artifacts caused by aliasing and quantisation.

2.1.3 i mage -B ased R endeRing
In contrast to polygon-based rendering in which 3D geometry is provided for con-
structing the 3D hull of an object, image-based rendering techniques render novel
3D views by using a set of input images. This avoids the need for a stage where 3D
data has to be explicitly provided by manual labour or some data acquisition means.
These techniques focus on computer vision algorithms in feature detection and
extraction from a set of basis images and thereafter reconstruct a 3D object or scene.