A Comparison of Optimal Scanline Voxelization Algorithms

Abstract: This thesis presents a comparison between different algorithms for optimal scanline voxelization of 3D models.As the optimal scanline relies on line voxelization, three such algorithms were evaluated. These were Real Line Voxelization (RLV), Integer Line Voxelization (ILV) and a 3D Bresenham line drawing algorithm. RLV and ILV were both based on voxel traversal by Amanatides and Woo. The algorithms were evaluated based on runtime and the approximation error of the integer versions, ILV and Bresenham. The result was that RLV performed better in every case, with ILV being 20-250% slower and Bresenham being 20-500% slower. The error metric used was the Jaccard distance and generally started at 20% and grew up towards 25% for higher voxel resolutions. This was true for both ILV and Bresenham. The conclusion was that there is no reason to use any of the integer versions over RLV. As they both performed and approximated the original 3D model worse.