How to compute a 3D Morton number (interleave the bits of 3 ints)

Question

I\'m looking for a fast way to compute a 3D Morton number. This site has a magic-number based trick for doing it for 2D Morton numbers, but it doesn\'t seem obvious how to e

Answer 1

I took the above and modified it to combine 3 16-bit numbers into a 48- (really 64-) bit number. Perhaps it will save someone the small bit of thinking to get there.

#include <inttypes.h>
#include <assert.h>
uint64_t zorder3d(uint64_t x, uint64_t y, uint64_t z){
     static const uint64_t B[] = {0x00000000FF0000FF, 0x000000F00F00F00F,
                                    0x00000C30C30C30C3, 0X0000249249249249};           
     static const int S[] =  {16, 8, 4, 2}; 
     static const uint64_t MAXINPUT = 65536;

     assert( ( (x < MAXINPUT) ) && 
      ( (y < MAXINPUT) ) && 
      ( (z < MAXINPUT) )
     );

     x = (x | (x << S[0])) & B[0];
     x = (x | (x << S[1])) & B[1];
     x = (x | (x << S[2])) & B[2];
     x = (x | (x << S[3])) & B[3];

     y = (y | (y << S[0])) & B[0];
     y = (y | (y << S[1])) & B[1];
     y = (y | (y << S[2])) & B[2];
     y = (y | (y << S[3])) & B[3];

     z = (z | (z <<  S[0])) & B[0];
     z = (z | (z <<  S[1])) & B[1];
     z = (z | (z <<  S[2])) & B[2];
     z = (z | (z <<  S[3])) & B[3];

     return ( x | (y << 1) | (z << 2) );
    }

Answer 2

Following is the code snippet to generate Morton key of size 64 bits for 3-D point.

using namespace std;

unsigned long long spreadBits(unsigned long long x)
{
    x=(x|(x<<20))&0x000001FFC00003FF;
    x=(x|(x<<10))&0x0007E007C00F801F;
    x=(x|(x<<4))&0x00786070C0E181C3;
    x=(x|(x<<2))&0x0199219243248649;
    x=(x|(x<<2))&0x0649249249249249;
    x=(x|(x<<2))&0x1249249249249249;
    return x;
}

int main()
{
    unsigned long long x,y,z,con=1;
    con=con<<63;
    printf("%#llx\n",(spreadBits(x)|(spreadBits(y)<<1)|(spreadBits(z)<<2))|con);    
}

Answer 3

The following code finds the Morton number of the three 10 bit input numbers. It uses the idee from your link and performs the bit spreading in the steps 5-5, 3-2-3-2, 2-1-1-1-2-1-1-1, and 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 because 10 is not a power of two.

......................9876543210
............98765..........43210
........987....56......432....10
......98..7..5..6....43..2..1..0
....9..8..7..5..6..4..3..2..1..0

Above you can see the location of every bit before the first and after every of the four steps.

public static Int32 GetMortonNumber(Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 z)
{
    return SpreadBits(x, 0) | SpreadBits(y, 1) | SpreadBits(z, 2);
}

public static Int32 SpreadBits(Int32 x, Int32 offset)
{
    if ((x < 0) || (x > 1023))
    {
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
    }

    if ((offset < 0) || (offset > 2))
    {
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
    }

    x = (x | (x << 10)) & 0x000F801F;
    x = (x | (x <<  4)) & 0x00E181C3;
    x = (x | (x <<  2)) & 0x03248649;
    x = (x | (x <<  2)) & 0x09249249;

    return x << offset;
}

Answer 4

You can use the same technique. I'm assuming that variables contain 32-bit integers with the highest 22 bits set to 0 (which is a bit more restrictive than necessary). For each variable x containing one of the three 10-bit integers we do the following:

x = (x | (x << 16)) & 0x030000FF;
x = (x | (x <<  8)) & 0x0300F00F;
x = (x | (x <<  4)) & 0x030C30C3;
x = (x | (x <<  2)) & 0x09249249;

Then, with x,y and z the three manipulated 10-bit integers we get the result by taking:

x | (y << 1) | (z << 2)

The way this technique works is as follows. Each of the x = ... lines above "splits" groups of bits in half such that there is enough space in between for the bits of the other integers. For example, if we consider three 4-bit integers, we split one with bits 1234 into 000012000034 where the zeros are reserved for the other integers. In the next step we split 12 and 34 in the same way to get 001002003004. Even though 10 bits doesn't make for a nice repeated division in two groups, you can just consider it 16 bits where you lose the highest ones in the end.

As you can see from the first line, you actually only need that for each input integer x it holds that x & 0x03000000 == 0.

Answer 5

I had a similar problem today, but instead of 3 numbers, I have to combine an arbitrary number of numbers of any bit length. I employed my own sort of bit spreading and masking algorithm and applied it to C# BigIntegers. Here is the code I wrote. As a compilation step, it figures out the magic numbers and mask for the given number of dimensions and bit depth. Then you can reuse the object for multiple conversions.

/// <summary>
/// Convert an array of integers into a Morton code by interleaving the bits.
/// Create one Morton object for a given pair of Dimension and BitDepth and reuse if when encoding multiple 
/// Morton numbers.
/// </summary>  
public class Morton
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Number of bits to use to represent each number being interleaved.
    /// </summary>
    public int BitDepth { get; private set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Count of separate numbers to interleave into a Morton number.
    /// </summary>
    public int Dimensions { get; private set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// The MagicNumbers spread the bits out to the right position.
    /// Each must must be applied and masked, because the bits would overlap if we only used one magic number.
    /// </summary>
    public BigInteger LargeMagicNumber { get; private set; }
    public BigInteger SmallMagicNumber { get; private set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// The mask removes extraneous bits that were spread into positions needed by the other dimensions.
    /// </summary>
    public BigInteger Mask { get; private set; }

    public Morton(int dimensions, int bitDepth)
    {
        BitDepth = bitDepth;
        Dimensions = dimensions;
        BigInteger magicNumberUnit = new BigInteger(1UL << (int)(Dimensions - 1));
        LargeMagicNumber = magicNumberUnit;
        BigInteger maskUnit = new BigInteger(1UL << (int)(Dimensions - 1));
        Mask = maskUnit;
        for (var i = 0; i < bitDepth - 1; i++)
        {
            LargeMagicNumber = (LargeMagicNumber << (Dimensions - 1)) | (i % 2 == 1 ? magicNumberUnit : BigInteger.Zero);
            Mask = (Mask << Dimensions) | maskUnit;       
        }
        SmallMagicNumber = (LargeMagicNumber >> BitDepth) << 1; // Need to trim off pesky ones place bit.
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Interleave the bits from several integers into a single BigInteger.
    /// The high-order bit from the first number becomes the high-order bit of the Morton number.
    /// The high-order bit of the second number becomes the second highest-ordered bit in the Morton number.
    /// 
    /// How it works.
    /// 
    /// When you multupliy by the magic numbers you make multiple copies of the the number they are multplying, 
    /// each shifted by a different amount.
    /// As it turns out, the high order bit of the highest order copy of a number is N bits to the left of the 
    /// second bit of the second copy, and so forth. 
    /// This is because each copy is shifted one bit less than N times the copy number.
    /// After that, you apply the AND-mask to unset all bits that are not in position.
    /// 
    /// Two magic numbers are needed because since each copy is shifted one less than the bitDepth, consecutive
    /// copies would overlap and ruin the algorithm. Thus one magic number (LargeMagicNumber) handles copies 1, 3, 5, etc, while the 
    /// second (SmallMagicNumber) handles copies 2, 4, 6, etc.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="vector">Integers to combine.</param>
    /// <returns>A Morton number composed of Dimensions * BitDepth bits.</returns>
    public BigInteger Interleave(int[] vector)
    {
        if (vector == null || vector.Length != Dimensions)
            throw new ArgumentException("Interleave expects an array of length " + Dimensions, "vector");
        var morton = BigInteger.Zero;
        for (var i = 0; i < Dimensions; i++)
        {
            morton |= (((LargeMagicNumber * vector[i]) & Mask) | ((SmallMagicNumber * vector[i]) & Mask)) >> i;
        }
        return morton;
    }


    public override string ToString()
    {
        return "Morton(Dimension: " + Dimensions + ", BitDepth: " + BitDepth 
            + ", MagicNumbers: " + Convert.ToString((long)LargeMagicNumber, 2) + ", " + Convert.ToString((long)SmallMagicNumber, 2)
            + ", Mask: " + Convert.ToString((long)Mask, 2) + ")";
    }
}

Answer 6

Good timing, I just did this last month!

The key was to make two functions. One spreads bits out to every-third bit. Then we can combine three of them together (with a shift for the last two) to get the final Morton interleaved value.

This code interleaves starting at the HIGH bits (which is more logical for fixed point values.) If your application is only 10 bits per component, just shift each value left by 22 in order to make it start at the high bits.

/* Takes a value and "spreads" the HIGH bits to lower slots to seperate them.
   ie, bit 31 stays at bit 31, bit 30 goes to bit 28, bit 29 goes to bit 25, etc.
   Anything below bit 21 just disappears. Useful for interleaving values
   for Morton codes. */
inline unsigned long spread3(unsigned long x)
{
  x=(0xF0000000&x) | ((0x0F000000&x)>>8) | (x>>16); // spread top 3 nibbles
  x=(0xC00C00C0&x) | ((0x30030030&x)>>4);
  x=(0x82082082&x) | ((0x41041041&x)>>2);
  return x;
}

inline unsigned long morton(unsigned long x, unsigned long y, unsigned long z)
{
  return spread3(x) | (spread3(y)>>1) | (spread3(z)>>2);
}