Overview Function List GLOD Web Site

NAME

GLOD - OpenGL-level creation, management, and rendering of multiresolution geometry.

LEVEL OF DETAIL OVERVIEW (GLOD TERMINOLOGY)

The level of detail pipeline consists of three basic stages: geometric simplification, adaptation, and rendering. The simplification process takes in ``flat'' geometry and produces from it a multiresolution hierarchy. There are several types of mulresolution hierarchies. Discrete hierarchies are a list of ever-simplified versions of your input model, and can be thought of as a close analog to mip-maps for texturing. Discrete hierarchies are extremely computationally efficient as far as rendering goes, but have limited efficiency for close-up viewing of large-scale geometry. Continuous hierarchies, while more computationally complex during rendering, address many of the limitations of discrete level of detail.

Before render this hierarchy, GLOD must pick a level within that hierarchy which cooresponds to how much detail you want in your rendered output. This process is called adaptation. You can adapt a hierarchy to a variety of goals --- a triangle budget for instance, or an error threshhold. Error thresholds are used to produce a lower-triangle version of your model that differs by at most a certain amount of visual detail from the original object. Error is computed with respect either (A) to screen space, meaning the number of pixels of error on your screen, or (B) to object space, meaning the number of units of error in your object's coordinate space. Usually, you don't actually adapt a single object blindly. Instead, you usually adapt a group of objects together so that you meet some global goal.

GLOD OVERVIEW

GLOD represents an extremely lightweight approach to Geometric Level of Detail toolkits. You will find that GLOD is not another scene graph library. Instead, GLOD is designed to closely mesh with the standard OpenGL programming model in such a way that using GLOD should be just like using standard OpenGL vertex arrays.

The most primitive element of GLOD is a patch, which represents the smallest drawable element within GLOD. GLOD performs simplification on objects -- collections of patches. Creating an object with multiple patches gives you the opportunity to change your OpenGL drawing state multiple times while drawing an object.

GLOD does not actually provide a mechanism to adapt a single object. Instead, you adapt a group of objects. This is motivated by the idea that you can always place an object in its own group and that the adaptation of groups of objects to some metric is usually quite a bit more complicated than it is to adapt a single object. Accordingly, objects are placed in groups when you first create an object. You can set a group of objects to various standard refinement modes, including triangle budgets and error budgets.

Drawing a GLOD object is a relatively straightforward process once its group has been adapted. Importantly, GLOD follows the same assumptions that OpenGL vertex arrays follow. GLOD does not modify your OpenGL state when you draw a patch. This allows you full control over object rendering. Some small exceptions to this rule are noted in the documentation.

This release of GLOD provides a number of facilities that make working with GLOD better match traditional LOD workflows, including readback and memory management. GLOD readback facilities are designed to allow a few additional things. Hierarchy readback allows you to perform simplification as an pre-process, making it possible to load up multiresolution objects in an efficient manner for scenarios like level-loading. In addition, GLOD supports draw readback, which allows you to read back ``what glod would draw''. This facility is provided to allow you to draw the output of GLOD objects yourself.

Memory management is not fully-implemented in the pre-release of GLOD, but will be supported by the final stable release. When this is complete, you will be able to restrict and customize GLOD's usage of video memory, for example. Some facilities may be provided to manage GLOD's usage of main memory as well.

API SUMMARY (see also...)

General Calls

glodInit
Initializes GLOD. This call is mandatory.

glodShutdown
Shuts down GLOD, freeing up memory, etc.

glodGetError
Reports the current error and resets the error flag.

Object Creation

glodNewObject
Creates and names an object in GLOD

glodInstanceObject
Creates an additional named instance of a GLOD object, allowing multiple adaptations of the same hierarchy

glodInsertElements
Inserts geometry into a GLOD object's patch using the same calling conventions as glDrawElements()

glodInsertArrays
Inserts geometry into a GLOD object's patch using the same calling conventions as glDrawArrays()

glodBuildObject
Performs the simplification process that transforms the inserted geometry into a specific type of multiresolution hierarchy

glodDeleteObject
Deletes a particular object instance

Readback

glodReadbackObject
Reads an already-simplified object into a specified buffer

glodLoadObject
Loads an object from a specified buffer that was previously created using glodReadbackObject()

glodFillElements
Reads the current geometry of an object into the current OpenGL vertex arrays and additionally a specified index array

glodFillArrays
Reads the current geometry of an object into the current OpenGL vertex arrays

Adaptation

glodNewGroup
Creates a new group of a specified name

glodBindObjectXform
glodObjectXform
When you have set a group to screen-space-aware adaptation, GLOD will need to know where the objects in that group are located. This call binds the current OpenGL viewport and matrix states to a particular object so that, when you do call glodAdaptGroup() , this adapation becomes possible.

glodAdaptGroup
Causes a particular group of objects to be adapted using your current adaptation settings

Parameter Control

glodObjectParameter[if]
glodGetObjectParameter[if]v
glodGroupParameter[if]
glodGetGroupParameter[if]v
Set and get object and group parameter settings

AUTHORS

Last updated by Nat Duca, n@jhu.edu, June 2003

MORE INFORMATION

For more information, visit the GLOD web site: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~graphics/GLOD


Last modified: 06/10/04 06:32:18 PM