Graphics Gems III (IBM Version)

VI.1

RAY TRACING WITH THE BSP TREE

Kelvin Sung,     University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois

Peter Shirley,     Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Publisher Summary

In order to speed up the intersection calculation in ray-tracing programs, people have implemented divide-and-conquer strategies such as hierarchical bounding volumes and octrees. Uniform subdivision has also been used to speed up that calculation. Uniform subdivision is undesirable for applications where the objects may be unevenly distributed in space. This is because the amount of memory needed for uniform subdivision is proportional to the highest density of objects, rather than the total number. Hierarchical-bounding volumes can be difficult to implement effectively ...