Publicação
Exploring mesh shaders
| Resumo: | Every artist is somewhat limited by the mean by which they expose their art. This is also true for the field of Computer Graphics, where there are many limiting factors that developers must go out of their way to avoid. The most limiting of these factors is the computing performance, which directly limits the complexity of what an artist can fabricate in a piece of hardware. As such, Computer Graphics’ investigators keep an eye out for the improvements made in the hardware department that enables them to introduce more complexity to the scenes they create on their computers. Three years ago, a novel approach to compute the geometric complexity of three-dimensional (3D) scenes was introduced: Mesh shaders. Mesh shaders pose as an alternative to the traditional geometric processing method and can be a more performant approach to handle specific geometric workloads. Notwithstanding, little attention has been given to these shaders. Thus, this thesis presents an investigative effort to evaluate the value proposition of these shaders across different scenarios. To do so, this thesis puts Mesh shaders against traditional implementations and measures their differences both in method and performance. By the end of this thesis, the reader should have a concise understanding of Mesh shaders, but not a clear cut answer regarding their use. These shaders can provide performance benefits in specific scenarios over the traditional approach, but not without considerable care by the developer. In fact, the flexibility provided by the Mesh shaders’ approach gives the developer a significant responsibility regarding their final performance. When incorrectly set up, these shaders can result in mediocre performances compared to those of the traditional pipeline. Ultimately, these shaders should be used by experienced users intending to avoid specific bottlenecks of the traditional approach. For others, the traditional pipeline offers a more streamlined approach, thoroughly optimised by default. |
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| Autores principais: | Carvalho, Miguel Ângelo Abreu de |
| Assunto: | Computer graphics Mesh shaders Performance Computação gráfica Mesh shaders Desempenho Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática |
| Ano: | 2022 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | Every artist is somewhat limited by the mean by which they expose their art. This is also true for the field of Computer Graphics, where there are many limiting factors that developers must go out of their way to avoid. The most limiting of these factors is the computing performance, which directly limits the complexity of what an artist can fabricate in a piece of hardware. As such, Computer Graphics’ investigators keep an eye out for the improvements made in the hardware department that enables them to introduce more complexity to the scenes they create on their computers. Three years ago, a novel approach to compute the geometric complexity of three-dimensional (3D) scenes was introduced: Mesh shaders. Mesh shaders pose as an alternative to the traditional geometric processing method and can be a more performant approach to handle specific geometric workloads. Notwithstanding, little attention has been given to these shaders. Thus, this thesis presents an investigative effort to evaluate the value proposition of these shaders across different scenarios. To do so, this thesis puts Mesh shaders against traditional implementations and measures their differences both in method and performance. By the end of this thesis, the reader should have a concise understanding of Mesh shaders, but not a clear cut answer regarding their use. These shaders can provide performance benefits in specific scenarios over the traditional approach, but not without considerable care by the developer. In fact, the flexibility provided by the Mesh shaders’ approach gives the developer a significant responsibility regarding their final performance. When incorrectly set up, these shaders can result in mediocre performances compared to those of the traditional pipeline. Ultimately, these shaders should be used by experienced users intending to avoid specific bottlenecks of the traditional approach. For others, the traditional pipeline offers a more streamlined approach, thoroughly optimised by default. |
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