Interactive Grass Rendering Using Real-Time Tessellation

Information

• Publication Type: Conference Paper
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Rendering and Modeling
• Date: June 2013
• ISBN: 978-80-86943-74-9
• Location: Plzen, CZ
• Lecturer: Klemens Jahrmann
• Editor: Manuel Oliveira and Vaclav Skala
• Booktitle: WSCG 2013 Full Paper Proceedings
• Conference date: 24. June 2013 – 27. June 2013
• Pages: 114 – 122
• Keywords: grass rendering, real-time rendering, billboards

Abstract

Grass rendering is needed for many outdoor scenes, but for real-time applications, rendering each blade of grass as geometry has been too expensive so far. This is why grass is most often drawn as a texture mapped onto the ground or grass patches rendered as transparent billboard quads. Recent approaches use geometry for blades that are near the camera and flat geometry for rendering further away. In this paper, we present a technique which is capable of rendering whole grass fields in real time as geometry by exploiting the capabilities of the tessellation shader. Each single blade of grass is rendered as a two-dimensional tessellated quad facing its own random direction. This enables each blade of grass to be influenced by wind and to interact with its environment. In order to adapt the grass field to the current scene, special textures are developed which encode on the one hand the density and height of the grass and on the other hand its look and composition.

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{JAHRMANN-2013-IGR,
  title =      "Interactive Grass Rendering Using Real-Time Tessellation",
  author =     "Klemens Jahrmann and Michael Wimmer",
  year =       "2013",
  abstract =   "Grass rendering is needed for many outdoor scenes, but for
               real-time applications, rendering each blade of grass as
               geometry has been too expensive so far. This is why grass is
               most often drawn as a texture mapped onto the ground or
               grass patches rendered as transparent billboard quads.
               Recent approaches use geometry for blades that are near the
               camera and flat geometry for rendering further away. In this
               paper, we present a technique which is capable of rendering
               whole grass fields in real time as geometry by exploiting
               the capabilities of the tessellation shader. Each single
               blade of grass is rendered as a two-dimensional tessellated
               quad facing its own random direction. This enables each
               blade of grass to be influenced by wind and to interact with
               its environment. In order to adapt the grass field to the
               current scene, special textures are developed which encode
               on the one hand the density and height of the grass and on
               the other hand its look and composition.",
  month =      jun,
  isbn =       "978-80-86943-74-9",
  location =   "Plzen, CZ",
  editor =     "Manuel Oliveira and Vaclav Skala",
  booktitle =  "WSCG 2013 Full Paper Proceedings",
  pages =      "114--122",
  keywords =   "grass rendering, real-time rendering, billboards",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2013/JAHRMANN-2013-IGR/",
}