VDSlib: A View-Dependent Simplification Package

VDSlib:

A View-Dependent Simplification and Rendering Package

 The library is in beta-release stage right now (as is this page). The library is fairly stable and a number of people have used it for useful work. However, changes are being made and version 2.0 is well underway. This version will shift the API significantly; the new version will be written entirely in C++ and will support many nice new features. The most important of these will be increased performance for fast rendering on modern graphics cards.

In the meantime, VDSlib1.0 provides a nice, clean, simple interface for experimenting with view-dependent simplification.

Note that VDSlib 2.0, while not yet fully released and supported as a standalone library, has been incorporated into GLOD, an efficient, minimal, yet full-featured API for level of detail in OpenGL applications.

Background: A very brief introduction to LOD and VDS, a detailed article describing VDS (oriented towards CAD users). You can find the course notes from "Advanced Issues in Level of Detail", a course I have organized at SIGGRAPH for the past couple of years, at LODbook.com.

An introduction to using VDSlib.

Version: The latest released version of VDSlib is v1.0, modified on Feb 20, 2002. See the VDS Change Log for details.

Download: Download a tarred, gzipped copy of VDSlib.

The distribution includes vdsview, a very simple example VDSlib application written by student as a class project. VDSview reads the binary VDS format, but we provide a few models in the ascii VIF format, including of course the famous Stanford bunny (courtesy of the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository). The VDSlib distribution also includes vif2vds and vds2vif, utilties for converting VIF and VDS files.

Documentation: Check out the VDSlib reference manual , or download a tar file containing the documention.

Installing: To date I have compiled VDSlib on an SGI (Irix 6.5) and under Linux (2.2.2). To compile the sample program you will need to link with GLUI, an excellent GUI-building library. If you are using Linux you will also need to install Mesa or an OpenGL driver that works with your hardware. I have a version that worked under Windows (VC6.0) last time I checked, but don't have time to update it.

Disclaimer: VDSlib 1.0 is basically frozen; don't expect the interface to change drastically until version 2.0 is released. If you find bugs, don't be startled (but please do let me know).

Future Improvements: VDSlib 2.0 is described in detail in Brenden Schubert's Master's thesis.