High Quality Hatching

This paper presents methods to generate hatching lines from polygonal meshes and render them in high quality either at interactive rates for on‐screen display or for reproduction in print, based on local curvature information that is integrated to form streamlines on the surface of the mesh.

Abstract

Abstract Hatching lines are often used in line illustrations to convey tone and texture of a surface. In this paper we present methods to generate hatching lines from polygonal meshes and render them in high quality either at interactive rates for on‐screen display or for reproduction in print. Our approach is based on local curvature information that is integrated to form streamlines on the surface of the mesh. We use a new algorithm that provides an even distribution of these lines. A special processing of these streamlines ensures high quality line rendering for both intended output media later on. While the streamlines are generated in a preprocessing stage, hatching lines are rendered either for vector‐based printer output or on‐screen display, the latter allowing for interaction in terms of changing the view parameters or manipulating the entire line shading model at run‐time using a virtual machine. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Display algorithms; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Line and curve generation image