A depth-cueing scheme based on linear transformations in tristimulus space

Abstract

We propose a generic and flexible depth-cueing scheme which subsumes many well-known and new color-based depth-cueing approaches. In particular, it includes standard intensity depth-cueing and rather neglected pure saturation depth-cueing. A couple of new combinations and variations of depth cues are presented. Their usefulness is demonstrated in many different fields of application, reaching from non-photorealistic rendering to information visualization. In addition to cues based on a geometric concept of depth, an abstract visualization approach in the form of semantic depth-cueing is proposed. Our depth-cueing scheme is based on linear transformations in the 3D tristimulus space of colors and on weighted sums of colors. Since all of the required operations are supported by contemporary consumer graphics hardware, the depth-cueing scheme can be implemented without performance cutbacks. Therefore, any real-time rendering application can be enriched by sophisticated depth-cueing.