Differentiable Micro-Mesh Construction

Micro-mesh ($\mu$-mesh) is a new graphics primitive for compact representation of extreme geometry, consisting of a low-polygon base mesh enriched by per micro-vertex displacement. A new generation of GPUs supports this structure with hardware evolution on $\mu$-mesh ray tracing, achieving real-time rendering in pixel level geometric details. In this article, we present a differentiable framework to convert standard meshes into this efficient format, offering a holistic scheme in contrast to the previous stage-based methods. In our construction context, a $\mu$-mesh is defined where each base triangle is a parametric primitive, which is then reparameterized with Laplacian operators for efficient geometry optimization. Our framework offers numerous advantages for high-quality $\mu$-mesh production: (1) end-to-end geometry optimization and displacement baking; (2) enabling the differentiation of renderings with respect to $\mu$-mesh for faithful reprojectability; (3) high scalability for integrating useful features for $\mu$-mesh production and rendering, such as minimizing shell volume, maintaining the isotropy of the base mesh, and visual-guided adaptive level of detail. Extensive experiments on $\mu$-mesh construction for a large set of high-resolution meshes demonstrate the superior quality achieved by the proposed scheme.