Displacement Mapping with an Augmented Patch Mesh

Abstract

Displacement mapping has been widely used for adding geometric surface details to 3D mesh models. However, it requires sufficient tessellation of the mesh if fine details are to be represented. In this paper, we propose a method for applying the displacement mapping even on coarse models by using an augmented patch mesh. The patch mesh is a regularly tessellated flat square mesh, which is mapped onto the target area. Our method applies displacement mapping to the patch mesh for fitting it to the original mesh as well as for adding surface details. We generate a patch map, which stores three-dimensional displacements from the patch mesh to the original mesh. A displacement map is also provided for defining the new surface feature. The target area in the original mesh is then replaced with the patch mesh, and the patch mesh reconstructs the original shape using the patch map and the new surface detail is added using the displacement map. Our results show that our method conveniently adds surface features to various models. The proposed method is particularly useful if the surface features change dynamically since the original mesh is preserved and the separate patch mesh overwrites the target area at runtime.