Interval Ray Tracing - a divide and conquer strategy for realistic computer graphics

Abstract

A new method for ray tracing parametric surfaces is developed. The method uses a divide-and-conquer strategy for rapid finding of the sectors of constant intensity. Techniques from interval analysis allow reducing the number of ray/surface intersections that must be computed. Main results are presented in terms of solving a general system of nonlinear equations, and thus can be extended to a large class of problems. Examples with B-spline surfaces demonstrate an improvement in computation time over a conventional method with a factor between 1.5 and 3.0. Additionally, a way of preventing "cracks" in triangulating parametric surfaces is shown. © 1992 Springer-Verlag.