An improved rendering technique for ray tracing Bezier and B-spline surfaces

Both numerical and subdivision methods are widely used approaches for ray t racing parametric surfaces. However, the expense of finding the ray-surface intersection points is a major drawback. Thus, simpler and less memory-int ensive strategies are needed to improve these methods without further compl icating them. This work presents an efficient algorithm for enhancing the p erformance of both numerical and subdivision methods. The proposed techniqu e can be extended to most applications based on these two methods. The comp utational time of both approaches is improved by 16-40%. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.