Practical Occluder Generation for Mobile Games

Area of Science:

• Computer Graphics
• Real-time Rendering
• Geometric Modeling

Background:

• Occlusion culling is vital for real-time rendering performance in games.
• Simplified proxy geometry (occluders) is used for efficient visibility testing.
• Manual occluder creation is time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a fast, fully automated method for generating high-quality occluders.
• To address the challenges of creating low-polygon, conservative, and accurate occluders for game assets.
• To bridge the gap between academic research and practical game development needs.

Main Methods:

• A two-stage approach for robust occluder generation.
• Novel inward offset mesh computation strategy.
• Conservative simplification using a new variant of Quadric Error Metrics (QEM).

Main Results:

• The method effectively handles noisy and complex geometry.
• Generates production-ready occluders rapidly (in seconds).
• Achieves significant triangle reduction while preserving occlusion fidelity.

Conclusions:

• The automated approach offers a practical and scalable solution for occluder generation.
• Improves efficiency in real-time rendering for mobile games.
• Enables faster development cycles for game assets.