GPU-assisted surface reconstruction on locally-uniform samples

Abstract

In point-based graphics, surfaces are represented by point clouds without explicit connectivity. If the distribution of the points can be carefully controlled, surface reconstruction becomes a much easier problem. We present a simple, completely local surface reconstruction algorithm for input point distributions that are locally uniform. The locality of the computation lets us handle large point sets using parallel and out-of-core methods. The algorithm can be implemented robustly with floating-point arithmetic. We demonstrate the simplicity, efficiency, and numerical stability of our algorithm with an out-of-core and parallel implementation using graphics hardware.