ADAPTIVE ISOCURVE-BASED RENDERING FOR FREEFORM SURFACES

Freeform surface rendering is traditionally performed by approximating the surface with polygons and then rendering the polygons. This appro ach is extremely common because of the complexity in accurately render ing the surfaces directly. Recently several papers presented methods t hat render surfaces as sequences of isocurves. These methods each have deficiencies in their ability to guarantee a complete coverage of the rendered surface, in their ability to prevent processing the same pix el multiple times, or in their ability to produce an optimal surface c overage under some prescribed norm. In this article, an algorithm is i ntroduced that alleviates the difficulties in all these areas. This al gorithm can be combined with a fast curve-rendering method to make sur face rendering without polygonal approximation practical.