A Real Time Rendering System with Normal Vector Shading

Abstract

This paper presents a graphics workstation for real time display of Phong shaded polygons. The applied shading method is based on normal vector interpolation using a precalculated reflectance map. Nearly 40 million pixels and more than 2 million 3 sided polygons per second can be displayed. After giving an overview of the system, we describe the implementation details of the architecture. The normal vector-based shader unit is the focus of this description. In addition, we present a new method for the reduction of Z-buffer initialization time by means of an additional frame counter. Finally, we summarize the performance data of the rendering system and give an outlook ofour future activities in this field.