VK_EXT_opacity_micromap
VK_EXT_opacity_micromap adds a micromap object to associate micro-geometry information with geometry in an acceleration structure as well as a specific application of an opacity micromap to acceleration sub-triangle opacity without having to call a user any-hit shader.
1. Problem Statement
Geometry in an acceleration structure in the basic ray tracing extensions contains either geometric information or bounds for custom geometry. There are some applications where having a more compact representation of sub-triangle level information can be useful. One specific application is handling opacity information more efficiently at traversal time than having to return to an application-provided any-hit shader.
2. Solution Space
The mapping of the data onto the mesh is one design choice. Traditionally, texturing onto geometry is accomplished by application-provided texture coordinates, but in this case that would add significant extra metadata and require potentially more complicated sampling. A quad domain is natural for some interpretations of map data, but that may require more information from the application on at least adjacency information, even if not full UV coordinates. A triangular mapping is very amenable to performant implementations both in hardware and in software while not requiring extra information from the application outside of a given triangle.
Relatedly, the mapping from triangle to index is another design choice. With raster images, pitch ordering is the de facto standard for interoperating images. There is no direct analogy to a triangular domain, though, and the most similar mapping is significantly less trivial than raster images. Moving to a mapping with more locality gives gains in terms of locality of processing, ease of downsampling, and similar operations.
3. Proposal
The extension defines a VkMicromapEXT object and functions to manipulate it which parallel the functions that operate on acceleration structures. The micromap information is defined on the domain of subdivided triangles on a given acceleration structure geometry triangle. The build information contains usage information to compute the size including the number of triangles with a given subdivision level and format. For an opacity micromap, the micromap contains either 1-bit or 2-bit information which controls how the traversal is performed when combined with a set of flags.
Once the micromap is built an extension structure can attach it to VkAccelerationStructureGeometryKHR along with mapping information from each triangle in the geometry to a specified triangle index in the micromap.
4. Examples
VkMicromapBuildInfoEXT mmBuildInfo = { VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MICROMAP_BUILD_INFO_EXT };
mmBuildInfo... = ;
vkGetMicromapBuildSizesEXT(..., &mmBuildInfo, &sizeInfo)
CreateBuffer(sizeInfo)
VkMicromapCreateInfoEXT mmCreateInfo = { VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MICROMAP_CREATE_INFO_EXT };
mmCreateInfo... = ;
vkCreateMicromapEXT(device, mmCreateInfo, null, µmap)
mmBuildInfo = ...;
vkCmdBuildMicromapsEXT(cmd, 1, &mmBuildInfo);
VkAccelerationStructureTrianglesOpacityMicromapEXT opacityGeometryMicromap = { VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_ACCELERATION_STRUCTURE_TRIANGLES_OPACITY_MICROMAP_EXT };
opacityGeometryMicromap... = ;
VkAccelerationStructureGeometryKHR bottomASGeometry = { VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_ACCELERATION_STRUCTURE_GEOMETRY_KHR };
bottomASGeometry... = ; bottomASGEometry.pNext = &opacityGeometryMicromap;
vkGetAccelerationStructureBuildSizesKHR() vkCreateAccelerationStructureKHR() vkCmdBuildAccelerationStructureKHR()