Accelerating vector graphics rendering using the graphics hardware pipeline

Abstract

Figure 1: Five complex RGB and CMYK documents GPU-rendered by Illustrator CC; all rendered with "GPU Preview" enabled. AbstractWe describe our successful initiative to accelerate Adobe Illustrator with the graphics hardware pipeline of modern GPUs. Relying on OpenGL 4.4 plus recent OpenGL extensions for advanced blend modes and first-class GPU-accelerated path rendering, we accelerate the Adobe Graphics Model (AGM) layer responsible for rendering sophisticated Illustrator scenes. Illustrator documents render in either an RGB or CMYK color mode. While GPUs are designed and optimized for RGB rendering, we orchestrate OpenGL rendering of vector content in the proper CMYK color space and accommodate the 5+ color components required. We support both non-isolated and isolated transparency groups, knockout, patterns, and arbitrary path clipping. We harness GPU tessellation to shade paths smoothly with gradient meshes. We do all this and render complex Illustrator scenes 2 to 6x faster than CPU rendering at Full HD resolutions; and 5 to 16x faster at Ultra HD resolutions.

Differentiable vector graphics rasterization for editing and learning

“…Much of it focused on antialiasing (e.g., [Duff 1989;Fabris and Forrest 1997;Manson and Schaefer 2013]). Recent work explored the efficient parallelization of vector graphics rasterization on graphics hardware (e.g., [Batra et al 2015;Kilgard and Bolz 2012;Kokojima et al 2006;Li et al 2016;Loop and Blinn 2005]). Nehab and Hoppe [2008] and Ganacim et al [2014] proposed data structures to efficiently compute the shaded color given an arbitrary point on the image.…”

“…One could consider a workflow where vector graphics are first rasterized [Batra et al 2015;Ganacim et al 2014;Kilgard and Bolz 2012] then post-processed by a raster-domain algorithm. Unfortunately, this is a one-way process that discards the structure implicit in the vector graphic, and the only way back to the vector domain is by re-tracing the raster result, which produces a graphic with a dramatically different structure.…”

Hierarchical Rasterization of Curved Primitives for Vector Graphics Rendering on the GPU

“…Several extensions exist: For example, the ‘stencil, then cover’ method used in Adobe Illustrator [BKKL15] extends color schemes and blending modes. Tile‐based rendering of stencils [YLK∗15] runs efficiently on mobile devices.…”

Locally refinable gradient meshes supporting branching and sharp colour transitions

“…With the advent of programmable shaders in the graphics pipeline, also the rendering of vector graphics can be accelerated [3]. In our application, the patches are rendered using the OpenGL tessellation shaders in fractional even mode, which is mostly straightforward.…”