Pixar’s OpenSubdiv

Project

OpenSubdiv is an open-source software library, originally developed by Pixar, for subdivision surface evaluation and rendering on CPU and GPU. It is the same code that Pixar uses internally for both interactive and offline rendering.

An ongoing collaboration between DigitalFish, Pixar, Microsoft Research, Google, DreamWorks and others, OpenSubdiv today embodies decades of experience and research. It runs on a wide variety of operating systems and hardware architectures, from high-end production hardware to mobile devices.

OpenSubdiv enables real-time 3-D graphics with high-quality surfaces including:

• Adaptive view-dependent tessellation for smooth silhouettes and automatic level-of-detail
• Semi-sharp creases for smoothly filleted or beveled edges
• Texture, normal and displacement mapping with Ptex or traditional uv-mapping
• Hierarchical edits for adding local fine detail