Triangle reordering for reduced overdraw in animated scenes

Abstract

We introduce an automatic approach for optimizing the triangle rendering order of animated meshes with the objective of reducing overdraw while maintaining good post-transform vertex cache efficiency. Our approach is based on prior methods designed for static meshes. We propose an algorithm that clusters the space of viewpoints and key frames. For each cluster, we generate a triangle order that exhibits satisfactory vertex cache efficiency and low overdraw. Results show that our approach significantly improves overdraw throughout the entire animation sequence while only requiring a few index buffers. We expect that this approach will be useful for games and other real-time rendering applications that involve complex shading of articulated characters.