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Concept
Hidden-surface determination
Summary
In 3D computer graphics, hidden-surface determination (also known as shown-surface determination, hidden-surface removal (HSR), occlusion culling (OC) or visible-surface determination (VSD)) is the process of identifying what surfaces and parts of surfaces can be seen from a particular viewing angle. A hidden-surface determination algorithm is a solution to the visibility problem, which was one of the first major problems in the field of 3D computer graphics . The process of hidden-surface determination is sometimes called hiding, and such an algorithm is sometimes called a hider. When referring to line rendering it is known as hidden-line removal. Hidden-surface determination is necessary to render a scene correctly, so that one may not view features hidden behind the model itself, allowing only the naturally viewable portion of the graphic to be visible.
Hidden-surface determination is a process by which surfaces that should not be visible to the user (for example, because they lie behind opaque objects such as walls) are prevented from being rendered. Despite advances in hardware capability, there is still a need for advanced rendering algorithms. The responsibility of a rendering engine is to allow for large world spaces, and as the world’s size approaches infinity, the engine should not slow down but remain at a constant speed. Optimizing this process relies on being able to ensure the deployment of as few resources as possible towards the rendering of surfaces that will not end up being displayed to the user.
There are many techniques for hidden-surface determination. They are fundamentally an exercise in sorting and usually vary in the order in which the sort is performed and how the problem is subdivided. Sorting large quantities of graphics primitives is usually done by divide and conquer.
Considering the rendering pipeline, the projection, the clipping, and the rasterization steps are handled differently by the following algorithms:
Z-buffering During rasterization, the depth/Z value of each pixel (or sample in the case of anti-aliasing, but without loss of generality the term pixel is used) is checked against an existing depth value.
Official source
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