The voxblt Engine: A Voxel Frame Buffer Processor

Abstract

The voxblt Engine (vE) is a 3D frame-buffer processor which manipulates and processes ''3~ bitmaps"" (voxel maps) stored in a cubic frame buffer of voxels. The vE is the 3D counterpart of the 20 frame buffer processor, which is an extended version of the 20 bitbl/ and RasterOps engines.The primitives of the vE are subcubes of the cubic frame buffer and are of three kinds: rooms (3D windows), jacks (3D cursors), and figurines (3D ,cons). In addition to manipUlating these primitives, the vE also serves as a monitor for interaction, as an interfaoe for 3D input devices, and as a channel for inputling into the cubic frame buffer 3D voxel images from either 3D scanners or a voxel image database. The vE has been developed as part of the CUBE system, In which it operates as an Independent processor executing its own commands stored in a 3D frame-buffer display list. A room manager, which is the 3D counterpart of the 20 Window manager, has been implemented on top cf the vE