Elias Kristmann | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

CuRast: Cuda-Based Software Rasterization for Billions of Triangles

Previous work shows that small triangles can be rasterized efficiently with compute shaders. Building on this insight, we explore how far this can be pushed for massive triangle datasets without the need to construct acceleration structures in advance. Method: A 3-stage rasterization pipeline first rasterizes small triangles directly in stage 1, using atomicMin to store the closest fragments. Larger triangles are forwarded to stages 2 and 3. Results: CuRast can render models with hundreds of millions of triangles up to 2-5x (unique) or up to 12x (instanced) faster than Vulkan. Vulkan remains an order of magnitude faster for low-poly meshes. Limitations: We currently focus on dense, opaque meshes that you would typically obtain from photogrammetry/3D reconstruction. Blending/Transparency is not yet supported, and scenes with thousands of low-poly meshes are not implemented efficiently. Future Work: To make it suitable for games and a wider range of use cases, future work will need to (1) optimize handling of scenes with tens of thousands of nodes/meshes, (2) add support for hierarchical clustered LODs such as those produced by Meshoptimizer, (3) add support for transparency, likely in its own stage so as to keep opaque rasterization untouched and fast. Source Code: https://github.com/m-schuetz/CuRast

cs.GR↗

arXiv2025

Variable-Rate Texture Compression: Real-Time Rendering with JPEG

Although variable-rate compressed image formats such as JPEG are widely used to efficiently encode images, they have not found their way into real-time rendering due to special requirements such as random access to individual texels. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of variable-rate texture compression on modern GPUs using the JPEG format, and how it compares to the GPU-friendly fixed-rate compression approaches BC1 and ASTC. Using a deferred rendering pipeline, we are able to identify the subset of blocks that are needed for a given frame, decode these, and colorize the framebuffer's pixels. Despite the additional $\sim$0.17 bit per pixel that we require for our approach, JPEG maintains significantly better quality and compression rates compared to BC1, and depending on the type of image, outperforms or competes with ASTC. The JPEG rendering pipeline increases rendering duration by less than 0.3 ms on an RTX 4090, demonstrating that sophisticated variable-rate compression schemes are feasible on modern GPUs, even in VR. Source code and data sets are available at: https://github.com/elias1518693/jpeg_textures

cs.GR↗