ABSTRACT
Modeling surfaces with polygons is often the most straightforward way to approach the problem of portraying objects in a scene. Polygons are good only up to a point, however. Image-based rendering (IBR) has become a paradigm of its own. As its name proclaims, images are the primary data used for this type of rendering. A great advantage of representing an object with an image is that the rendering cost is proportional to the number of pixels rendered, and not to, say, the number of vertices in a geometrical model. So, one use of image-based rendering is as a more efficient way to render models. However, IBR techniques have a much wider use than this. Many objects, such as clouds and fur, are difficult to represent with polygons. Layered semitransparent images can be used to display such complex surfaces.
