| 1.1 Basic Nurbs Support
1.1.1 Nodes 1.1.2 Tessellation Strategies 1.1.3 Automatic Level of Detail |
order defines the order of the spline which is degree+1. The order of the curve must be greater or equal to 2 to have a valid degree. The number of control points must be at least equal to the order of the curve. The order defines the number of adjacent control points that influence a given control point. An implementation may limit the order to a certain number. The most common orders are 3 (quadratic polynomial) and 4 (cubic polynomial), which are sufficient to achieve the desired curvature in most cases.
controlPoint defines a set of control points which must be equal to the number of knot values plus the order. The basic shape of the spline is controlled by these points. As a result of the lack of 4D Coordinate field type in VRML the control points and the corresponding weight values are held in separate fields. This separation also allows independent animation of the controlPoint fields using a CoordinateInterpolator node.
A weight value that must be greater than zero is assigned to each controlPoint. The ordering of the values is equivalent to the ordering of the control point values which means that the first weight value is assigned to the first control point. If the weight of a control point increased above 1 the point is closer approximated by the curve. The number of values must be identical to the number of control points. If the length of the weight vector is 0, the default weight 1.0 is assumed for each control point.
knots define the knot vector. The number of knots must be equal to the number of control points plus the order of the curve. The order must be non-decreasing. By setting successive knot values equal the degree of continuity is decreased, which implies that the surface gets edges. If k is the order of the curve, k consecutive knots at the end or the beginning of the vector let converge the curve to the last or the first control point respectively. Within the knot vector there may be not more than k-1 consecutive knots of equal value. If the length of a knot vector is 0, a default uniform knot vector is computed.
For a 2-dimensional parameter space as in the NurbsSurface case we need additional information to extract
the control points in correct order. Two dimension fields define the size of the patch set
up by the control points.
Because low-level real-time rendering API's currently can handle
only planar triangles, a NURBS surface needs to be broken down, or tessellated
into an set of triangles approximating the true surface.
Tessellation can be done in different coordinate spaces :
A specific goal of this implementation is to study new NURBS animation techniqes by dynamical altering of the controlPoint and weight field of a NurbsSurface. Using fixed tessellation the NURBS blending function at the evaluation point could be cached and need not to be recomputed on an animation.
The tessellation field give hints to the curve tessellator. A value> = order sets an absolute number of subdivision step, 0 lets the browser choose an suitable tessellation. Interpretation of values below 0 are implementation dependent.
For an implementation subdividing the surface in a equal
number of subdivision steps tessellation values could be interpreted in the
following way:
if a tessellation value is
greater 0, the number of tessellation points are tessellation+1;
if a
tessellation value is smaller than 0, the number of tessellation points are (-tessellation * dimension)+1
if a tessellation value
is 0, the number of tessellation points are (2 * dimension)+1
For implementations doing tessellations based on choord
length tessellation values <0 could be interpreted as the max choord length deviation in
pixels.
Taking advantage of the totally flexible tessellation of NURBS models
new ways of LOD will be explored. Dependent on various parameters
the output of the tesselation process is adapted in every frame. This trade
off between quality of the rendered model and the frame-rate must take
account of
The trimming curve specifies a NURBS-curve that limits the NURBS surface in order to create NURBS surfaces that contain holes or have smooth boundaries. Trimming curves are curves in the parametric space of the surface. An implementation approach can be based on the OpenGL trimming definition:
A trimming region is defined by a set of closed trimming loops in the
parameter space of a surface. When a loop is oriented counter-clockwise,
the area within the loop is retained, and the part outside is discarded.
When the loop is oriented clockwise, the area within the loop is discarded,
and the rest is retained. Loops may be nested, but a nested loop must be
oriented oppositely from the loop that contains it. The outermost loop
must be oriented counter-clockwise.
A trimming loop consists of a connected sequence of NURBS curves and
piece wise linear curves. The last point of every curve in the sequence
must be the same as the first point of the next curve, and the last point
of the last curve must be the same as the first point of the first curve.
Self intersecting curves are not allowed.
The following Nodes sketch a trimmed NURBS surface extension.
Thereby the TrimmedSurface contains a NurbsSurface and a set of Contour2D nodes describing the trimming loops. The trimming loops are sets of curve segments defined with Polyline2D and NurbsCurve2D.
Basically NURBS can be simply animated by alteration of single control vertices. Thereby the NURBS surface will always keep its smoothness. With the order of the surface the impact of the cv-animation on adjacent control points and so the range of the animation can be changed.
NURBS are also applicable for the animation of values using smooth curves expressed in NURBS format. An adaption of the VRML PositionInterpolator node to a NURBS description leads to the NurbsPositionInterpolator. Using a VRML PositionInterpolator it is not possible to specify a smooth movement like a path along a circle until the curve is sampled to a very fine stepping. In many existing VRML content the data for Interpolators take up a serious amount of the total size of the VRML file. Using Spline (NURBS) based interpolation the amount of data can be reduced considerably.
Extending the concept NurbsCurve (one Parameter), NurbsSurface (two parameters) to the parametric dimension 3 results in a NurbsVolume. So given a (u,v,w) parameter as input a 3D (x,y,z) output can be computed. The CoordinateDeformer defines a volume and applies a space warp to this volume. Any given conventional VRML node can be deformated by this node. This concept can also be found in programs like 3D Studio Max in form of a Free From Deformation (FFD).