Line drawings via abstracted shading

Abstract

We describe a GPU-based algorithm for rendering a 3D model as a line drawing, based on the insight that a line drawing can be understood as an abstraction of a shaded image. We thus render lines along tone boundaries or thin dark areas in the shaded image. We extend this notion to the dual: we render highlight lines along thin bright areas and tone boundaries. We combine the lines with toon shading to capture broad regions of tone.

The resulting line drawings effectively convey both shape and material cues. The lines produced by the method can include silhouettes, creases, and ridges, along with a generalization of suggestive contours that responds to lighting as well as viewing changes. The method supports automatic level of abstraction, where the size of depicted shape features adjusts appropriately as the camera zooms in or out. Animated models can be rendered in real time because costly mesh curvature calculations are not needed.

The source code for this project (and others, including Dynamic 2D Patterns and Free-form Sketch) is available via the jot-lib project on Google code.