Merged Multiresolution Hierarchies for Shadow Map Compression

• Published in: Computer graphics forum Vol. 35; no. 7; pp. 383 - 390
• Main Authors: Scandolo, Leonardo, Bauszat, Pablo, Eisemann, Elmar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.10.2016
• Subjects: Algorithms; Analogies; Analysis; and texture; Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS); Compressing; Data compression; Graph theory; Hierarchies; Homogeneity; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism-Color; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three‐Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Color, shading, shadowing, and texture; I.4.2 [Computer Graphics]: Compression (Coding)-Exact coding; Image processing systems; Representations; shading; shadowing; Shadows; Studies
• ISSN: 0167-7055; 1467-8659
• DOI: 10.1111/cgf.13035

Multiresolution Hierarchies (MH) and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) are two recent approaches for the compression of high‐resolution shadow information. In this paper, we introduce Merged Multiresolution Hierarchies (MMH), a novel data structure that unifies both concepts. An MMH leverages both hierarchical homogeneity exploited in MHs, as well as topological similarities exploited in DAG representations. We propose an efficient hash‐based technique to quickly identify and remove redundant subtree instances in a modified relative MH representation. Our solution remains lossless and significantly improves the compression rate compared to both preceding shadow map compression algorithms, while retaining the full run‐time performance of traditional MH representations.