RTC_GEOMETRY_TYPE_SUBDIVISION(3)

  NAME

    RTC_GEOMETRY_TYPE_SUBDIVISION - subdivision geometry type

  SYNOPSIS

    #include <embree4/rtcore.h>

    RTCGeometry geometry =
      rtcNewGeometry(device, RTC_GEOMETRY_TYPE_SUBDIVISION);

  DESCRIPTION

Catmull-Clark subdivision meshes are supported, including support for edge creases, vertex creases, holes, non-manifold geometry, and face-varying interpolation. The number of vertices per face can be in the range of 3 to 15 vertices (triangles, quadrilateral, pentagons, etc).

Subdivision meshes are created by passing RTC_GEOMETRY_TYPE_SUBDIVISION to the rtcNewGeometry function. Various buffers need to be set by the application to set up the subdivision mesh. See rtcSetGeometryBuffer and rtcSetSharedGeometryBuffer for more details on how to set buffers. The face buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_FACE type and RTC_FORMAT_UINT format) contains the number of edges/indices of each face (3 to 15), and the number of faces is inferred from the size of this buffer. The index buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_INDEX type) contains multiple (3 to 15) 32-bit vertex indices (RTC_FORMAT_UINT format) for each face, and the number of edges is inferred from the size of this buffer. The vertex buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_VERTEX type) stores an array of single precision x, y, z floating point coordinates (RTC_FORMAT_FLOAT3 format), and the number of vertices is inferred from the size of this buffer.

Optionally, the application may set additional index buffers using different buffer slots if multiple topologies are required for face-varying interpolation. The standard vertex buffers (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_VERTEX) are always bound to the geometry topology (topology 0) thus use RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_INDEX with buffer slot 0. User vertex data interpolation may use different topologies as described later.

Optionally, the application can set up the hole buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_HOLE) which contains an array of 32-bit indices (RTC_FORMAT_UINT format) of faces that should be considered non-existing in all topologies. The number of holes is inferred from the size of this buffer.

Optionally, the application can fill the level buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_LEVEL) with a tessellation rate for each of the edges of each face. This buffer must have the same size as the index buffer. The tessellation level is a positive floating point value (RTC_FORMAT_FLOAT format) that specifies how many quads along the edge should be generated during tessellation. If no level buffer is specified, a level of 1 is used. The maximally supported edge level is 4096, and larger levels are clamped to that value. Note that edges may be shared between (typically 2) faces. To guarantee a watertight tessellation, the level of these shared edges should be identical. A uniform tessellation rate for an entire subdivision mesh can be set by using the rtcSetGeometryTessellationRate function. The existence of a level buffer has precedence over the uniform tessellation rate.

Optionally, the application can fill the sparse edge crease buffers to make edges appear sharper. The edge crease index buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_EDGE_CREASE_INDEX) contains an array of pairs of 32-bit vertex indices (RTC_FORMAT_UINT2 format) that specify unoriented edges in the geometry topology. The edge crease weight buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_EDGE_CREASE_WEIGHT) stores for each of these crease edges a positive floating point weight (RTC_FORMAT_FLOAT format). The number of edge creases is inferred from the size of these buffers, which has to be identical. The larger a weight, the sharper the edge. Specifying a weight of infinity is supported and marks an edge as infinitely sharp. Storing an edge multiple times with the same crease weight is allowed, but has lower performance. Storing an edge multiple times with different crease weights results in undefined behavior. For a stored edge (i,j), the reverse direction edges (j,i) do not have to be stored, as both are considered the same unoriented edge. Edge crease features are shared between all topologies.

Optionally, the application can fill the sparse vertex crease buffers to make vertices appear sharper. The vertex crease index buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_VERTEX_CREASE_INDEX), contains an array of 32-bit vertex indices (RTC_FORMAT_UINT format) to specify a set of vertices from the geometry topology. The vertex crease weight buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_VERTEX_CREASE_WEIGHT) specifies for each of these vertices a positive floating point weight (RTC_FORMAT_FLOAT format). The number of vertex creases is inferred from the size of these buffers, and has to be identical. The larger a weight, the sharper the vertex. Specifying a weight of infinity is supported and makes the vertex infinitely sharp. Storing a vertex multiple times with the same crease weight is allowed, but has lower performance. Storing a vertex multiple times with different crease weights results in undefined behavior. Vertex crease features are shared between all topologies.

Subdivision modes can be used to force linear interpolation for parts of the subdivision mesh; see rtcSetGeometrySubdivisionMode for more details.

For multi-segment motion blur, the number of time steps must be first specified using the rtcSetGeometryTimeStepCount call. Then a vertex buffer for each time step can be set using different buffer slots, and all these buffers have to have the same stride and size.

Also see tutorial [Subdivision Geometry] for an example of how to create subdivision surfaces.

  Parametrization

The parametrization for subdivision faces is different for quadrilaterals and non-quadrilateral faces.

The parametrization of a quadrilateral face uses the first vertex p0 as base point, and the vector p1 - p0 as u-direction and p3 - p0 as v-direction.

The parametrization for all other face types (with number of vertices not equal 4), have a special parametrization where the subpatch ID n (of the n-th quadrilateral that would be obtained by a single subdivision step) and the local hit location inside this quadrilateral are encoded in the UV coordinates. The following code extracts the sub-patch ID i and local UVs of this subpatch:

    unsigned int l = floorf(0.5f*U);
    unsigned int h = floorf(0.5f*V);
    unsigned int i = 4*h+l;
    float u = 2.0f*fracf(0.5f*U)-0.5f;
    float v = 2.0f*fracf(0.5f*V)-0.5f;

This encoding allows local subpatch UVs to be in the range [-0.5,1.5[ thus negative subpatch UVs can be passed to rtcInterpolate to sample subpatches slightly out of bounds. This can be useful to calculate derivatives using finite differences if required. The encoding further has the property that one can just move the value u (or v) on a subpatch by adding du (or dv) to the special UV encoding as long as it does not fall out of the [-0.5,1.5[ range.

To smoothly interpolate vertex attributes over the subdivision surface we recommend using the rtcInterpolate function, which will apply the standard subdivision rules for interpolation and automatically takes care of the special UV encoding for non-quadrilaterals.

  Face-Varying Data

Face-varying interpolation is supported through multiple topologies per subdivision mesh and binding such topologies to vertex attribute buffers to interpolate. This way, texture coordinates may use a different topology with additional boundaries to construct separate UV regions inside one subdivision mesh.

Each such topology i has a separate index buffer (specified using RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_INDEX with buffer slot i) and separate subdivision mode that can be set using rtcSetGeometrySubdivisionMode. A vertex attribute buffer RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_VERTEX_ATTRIBUTE bound to a buffer slot j can be assigned to use a topology for interpolation using the rtcSetGeometryVertexAttributeTopology call.

The face buffer (RTC_BUFFER_TYPE_FACE type) is shared between all topologies, which means that the n-th primitive always has the same number of vertices (e.g. being a triangle or a quad) for each topology. However, the indices of the topologies themselves may be different.

  EXIT STATUS

On failure NULL is returned and an error code is set that can be queried using rtcGetDeviceError.

  SEE ALSO

[rtcNewGeometry]