Efficient substitutes for subdivision surfaces

Subdivision surfaces provide a compact representation for smooth surfaces that facilitate modeling and animation. They have widespread application in the movie industry, and there's a natural desire to use them also in real-time applications. This course presents theoretical results, implementations, applications, and future research directions. Topics include an introduction to subdivision surfaces, an overview of the surface-evaluation algorithms that are suitable for real-time rendering, implementation of those algorithms on current and next-generation GPUs, and other practical considerations. The course concludes with a section on practical application of these theoretical schemes and GPU implementations to Valve's source game engine and ILM's film production.