Interactive display of large-scale NURBS models

We present serial and parallel algorithms for interactive rendering of large scale and complex NURBS models on current graphics systems. The algorithms tessellate the NURBS surfaces into triangles and render them using triangle rendering engines. The main characteristics of the algorithms are improved polygonization algorithms, exploitation of spatial and temporal coherence and back-patch culling. Polygonization anomalies like cracks and angularities are avoided. We analyze a number of issues in parallelization of these techniques, as well. The algorithms work well in practice and are able to display models consisting of thousands of surfaces at interactive frame rates on the highly parallel graphics system, Pixel-Planes 5.