Vertex Compression with Mesh Shaders for Skinned Meshes

Information

• Publication Type: Bachelor Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Rendering and Modeling
• Date: October 2024
• Date (Start): January 2023
• Date (End): October 2024
• Matrikelnummer: 01326608
• First Supervisor:
  • Johannes Unterguggenberger
  • Bernhard Kerbl
  • Michael Wimmer
• Keywords: compression, vertex data, vertex compression, meshlets, mesh shaders

Abstract

Vertex compression helps to enhance the performance of real-time rendering applications, making it a valuable technique in modern computer graphics. In this work, we investigate current state-of-the-art methods for the compression of positions, normals, texture coordinates and blend attributes. Our primary objective is to efficiently compress blend attributes in rigged meshes, particularly focusing on bone weights and indices. We leverage a recent hardware advancement: the mesh shading pipeline. This pipeline enables us to propose a novel compression scheme for blend attributes, which achieves a significant reduction in memory usage of up to 92.75% compared to existing state-of-theart methods using a traditional rendering pipeline. Additionally, we briefly discuss and compare different meshlet building algorithms, meshlet buffer structures, and meshlet extensions within the Vulkan framework. Finally, the proposed codecs are validated through a series of benchmarks focused on resource utilization and performance.

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BibTeX

@bachelorsthesis{kimmersdorfer-2024-vcpr,
  title =      "Vertex Compression with Mesh Shaders for Skinned Meshes",
  author =     "Gerald Kimmersdorfer",
  year =       "2024",
  abstract =   "Vertex compression helps to enhance the performance of
               real-time rendering applications, making it a valuable
               technique in modern computer graphics. In this work, we
               investigate current state-of-the-art methods for the
               compression of positions, normals, texture coordinates and
               blend attributes. Our primary objective is to efficiently
               compress blend attributes in rigged meshes, particularly
               focusing on bone weights and indices. We leverage a recent
               hardware advancement: the mesh shading pipeline. This
               pipeline enables us to propose a novel compression scheme
               for blend attributes, which achieves a significant reduction
               in memory usage of up to 92.75% compared to existing
               state-of-theart methods using a traditional rendering
               pipeline. Additionally, we briefly discuss and compare
               different meshlet building algorithms, meshlet buffer
               structures, and meshlet extensions within the Vulkan
               framework. Finally, the proposed codecs are validated
               through a series of benchmarks focused on resource
               utilization and performance. ",
  month =      oct,
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Research Unit of Computer Graphics, Institute of Visual
               Computing and Human-Centered Technology, Faculty of
               Informatics, TU Wien ",
  keywords =   "compression, vertex data, vertex compression, meshlets, mesh
               shaders",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2024/kimmersdorfer-2024-vcpr/",
}