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Published 1982 | public
Report

Ray tracing parametric patches

Abstract

This paper describes an algorithm that uses ray t racing techniques to display bivariate polynomial surface patches. A new intersection algorithm is developed which uses ideas from algebraic geometry to obtain a numerical procedure for finding the intersection of a ray and a patch without subdivision. The algorithm may use complex coordinates for the (u, v)-parameters of the patches. The choice of these coordinates makes the computations more uniform, so that there are fewer special cases to be considered. In particular, the appearance and disappearance of silhouette edges can be handled quite naturally. The uniformity of these techniques may be suitable for implementation on either a general purpose pipelined machine, or on special purpose hardware.

Additional Information

Appears in ACM Computer Graphics, Volume 16, Number 3 July 1982, pages 245-254.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
December 22, 2023