Scanline Rendering of Parametric Surfaces*
Dino Schweitzer
and
Elizabeth S. Cobb
C o m p u t e r Science D e p a r t m e n t
U n i v e r s i t y of U t a h
Salt L a k e City, U t a h 84112
Abstract
A scanline a l g o r i t h m is described which renders
bicubic patches directly from the p a r a m e t r i c
description without producing a polygonal
approximation. The a l g o r i t h m is p a r t i a l l y based on
e a r l i e r work by Whitted. A p r i m i t i v e object, called a
"curved-edge polygon", is defined, and an a l g o r i t h m
for b r e a k i n g down a bicubic patch into the p r i m i t i v e
objects is described. A general surface intersection
method is employed to provide a r o b u s t silhouette
edge detector. Shades are computed by calculating a
cubic a p p r o x i m a t i o n to the n o r m a l surface and
performing either a cubic or a l i n e a r interpolation of
the bounding edge n o r m a l s across the scanline.
Subdivision of p a r a m e t r i c surfaces is used to reduce
the complexity of the surfaces being rendered,
providing d r a m a t i c i m p r o v e m e n t in the results of both
the silhouette detector and the s h a d i n g methods.
CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: 1.3.3
[Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image G e n e r a t i o n
Display algorithms; 1.3.5 [Computer Graphics]:
C o m p u t a t i o n a l G e o m e t r y and Object Modeling
- Curve, surface, solid and object representations; 1.3.7
[Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics
and Realism - Color, shading, shadowing and texture.
General Term: Algorithms
*This work was supported in p a r t by the N a t i o n a l
Science F o u n d a t i o n (MCS-8004116) and the U.S.
A r m y Research Office (DAAG29-81K-0111).
Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted
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otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission.
@ 1982 ACM0-89791-076-1/82/007/0265 $00.75
265
1. Introduction
Full-color s h a d e d r a s t e r i m a g e s can often
convey more useful information about the shape of
p a r a m e t r i c surfaces t h a n the b e t t e r established line-
d r a w i n g displays. Shaded r a s t e r i m a g e s have g r e a t
p o t e n t i a l for use in computer-aided design systems
because of t h e i r h i g h e r information content and
m i n i m a l a m b i g u i t y . However, t h e r e is no general
class of a l g o r i t h m s for g e n e r a t i n g such images. The
continued study of methods for generation of r a s t e r
i m a g e s of smooth surfaces is crucial if designers are to
be able to use t h e full power of h i g h - q u a l i t y computer
graphics.
Scanline r e n d e r i n g methods are an i m p o r t a n t
subset of r e n d e r i n g algorithms for r a s t e r devices
because t h e y m a k e use of coherence to produce images
faster t h a n other r a s t e r methods. M a n y scanline
r e n d e r i n g a l g o r i t h m s for polygons are well known,
b u t t h e r e are few, if any, t r u l y satisfactory methods
for r e n d e r i n g p a r a m e t r i c a l l y defined ~urfaces in
scanline order.
This p a p e r describes an a l g o r i t h m which
r e n d e r s bicubic patches in a scanline m a n n e r directly
from the p a r a m e t r i c surface description and without
recourse to polygonal approximation. Problems which
are addressed include:
- deciding w h a t are the characteristics of a
patch which can be rendered "easily" in
scanline order
- d e c i d i n g how more complicated patches
can be subdivided into this simpler type of
patch
- d e v i s i n g a method for tracing out curved
edges in scanline order
- providing a method for calculating
silhouette edges
- devising a n a l g o r i t h m for assigning
shades at each point on the patch
2. Background
Some b a c k g r o u n d in the a r e a of scanline
r e n d e r i n g of p a r a m e t r i c surfaces is useful in order to
u n d e r s t a n d t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p between this a l g o r i t h m
and existing ones.
2.1. Existing Methods
One of the earliest raster rendering algorithms
for parametric surfaces was that of Catmull [3]. The
algorithm was not scanline oriented, but r a t h e r used
an extremely fast subdivision technique to subdivide
the patch until a patch that was smaller than a single
picture element (pixel) was obtained. At this point,
the (small) patch could be rendered easily.
Another method, which could conceivably be
scanline oriented but was not necessarily so, involved
deriving a polygonal approximation to the smooth
surface and rendering the polygons. In order to get a
smooth-shaded image, this approach involved
approximating surface normals with averaging
techniques. Further, deriving the polygonal
approximation was often a tedious task which was
performed manually. The A l p h a _ l group at the
University of Utah is developing an experimental
CAGD system in which high-quality raster graphics
plays an important role. They currently use a method
of automatically generating a polygonal
approximation to B-spline surfaces to within a
specified tolerance using subdivision techniques,
producing high-quality smooth shaded renderings
from those polygons using a scanline algorithm [6].
Their scanline-order subdivision approach is a
modification of the Lane-Carpenter algorithm [5].
The advantage of the polygonal approximation
approach to parametric surface rendering is t h a t
polygon rendering is fast and fairly easy to
implement. One drawback to polygonal
approximations is the boundary edges of such a
surface. A finer approximation is required to avoid
polygonal edges than is necessary to produce smooth
shading on the interior of the patch. Often, the edges
of a surface rendered in this manner have visible
linear segments, even when the shading in the
interior of the surface appears quite smooth.
2.2. Scanline Methods
In addition to these approaches, there have been
several attempts to render surfaces in scanline order
directly from the parametric description without
generating an approximating polygonal mesh. Blinn's
algorithm [5, 2] was primarily an algebraic approach.
He solved the surface and silhouette equations on
each scanline, creating a list of boundaries for t h a t
scanline. By sorting th6 boundaries in order of x
value on the scanline, successive pairs of boundaries
represented areas that required shading. The
algorithm was very general, but had some numerical
instabilities.
Whitted's algorithm [5] developed a primitive
object which will be referred to in this paper as a
"curved-edge polygon", a term which will be defined
shortly. His algorithm detected silhouette edges by
solving the normal equations along each edge for
locations where the z component was zero. A cubic
hermite interpolant was used to describe the
silhouette between the points along the edge. To
obtain finer resolution, the patch was subdivided prior
to solving for silhouette intersections with the
boundaries. Once the silhouettes were determined,
the resulting curved-edge polygons were rendered in a
typical scanline fashion using Newton iteration to
solve for successive intersections of the edges with the
266
scanlines. The major disadvantage of Whitted's
approach was the lack of generality in finding
silhouettes. His silhouette detector would fail to find
silhouettes which did not intersect the boundary of
the patch.
3. Algorithm Overview
The algorithm described in this paper is loosely
based on Whitted's algorithm. "Curved-edge
polygons" are used as a primitive object type and more
complex patches are reduced to this primitive type.
The term "polygon" may be somewhat misleading
because it gives the impression that the primitive
objects are planar. This is certainly not the case
- p l a n a r curved-edge polygons are a special case of the
objects referred to as curved-edge polygons. The term
"curved-edge polygon" is chosen because the methods
which are used to render such an object are quite
analogous to the methods for rendering polygons.
We define a curved-edge polygon to be any
bicubic patch which:
-does not contain any silhouette edges
(with respect to the current view)
- h a s only bounding edges which are
monotonic in y
-can be represented by univariate cubic
equations of its bounding edges
The reasoning behind the first of these restrictions is
quite obvious, because silhouette edges are the places
where the patch begins to curve behind itself. The
hidden surface problem can be ignored within a single
curved-edge polygon if this criterion is met. The
second and third requirements have to do with the
nature of scanline rendering. Y-monotonicity of
bounding edges insures t h a t the edge only crosses any
given scanline a single time, so it is not necessary to
find multiple values of an edge for a scanline. The
expression of the patch in terms of its bounding edges
allows the edges to be traced out as the algorithm
progresses up the scanlines. Appropriately shaded
pixels are drawn between pairs of edges which
intersect the current scanline.
The algorithm consists of essentially two parts.
The first part is a series of preprocessing steps.
Bivariate cubic surface descriptions are converted into
a standard internal form and these patches are
processed to derive the curved-edge polygons. This
involves detection of silhouette edges and edges which
are not monotonic in y, as well as piecing of the edges
back together into curved-edge polygons. The second
part of the algorithm does the actual rendering of the
curved-edge polygons.
4. Preprocessing Steps
The preprocessing steps consist of:
-Subdividing the patch to some user-
specified flatness criterion to improve the
shading.
-Converting the patch to the internal
power basis representation.
- Deriving position coefficients for
univariate cubic curves along the
 boundaries.
- Deriving an a p p r o x i m a t i o n to the n o r m a l
surface and the coefficients for u n i v a r i a t e
cubic n o r m a l curves along the boundaries.
-Locating any silhouette edges in the
patch.
- Subdividing edges which are non-
monotonic in screen-space y value.
-Piecing the various b o u n d a r y and
silhouette edges back together into
coherent "curved-edge polygons."
All of these steps will be described in the
following sections.
5. Subdivision
A quick method for simplifying the complexity
of a p a r a m e t r i c surface is to subdivide the patch until
some flatness criterion is met, and t h e n to e v a l u a t e
(render) each r e s u l t i n g patch as an i n d e p e n d e n t
surface. If a Bezier or open B-spline r e p r e s e n t a t i o n is
used, the desired t a n g e n c y and continuity conditions
between patches are m a i n t a i n e d t h r o u g h o u t the
subdivision. This subdivision step m a k e s certain
other aspects of the a l g o r i t h m much b e t t e r behaved.
In p a r t i c u l a r , n o r m a l surfaces to bicubic patches can
be degenerate, and subdivision m a k e s t h e m more
m a n a g e a b l e because the subdivided pieces have less
curvature. This in t u r n m a k e s both the silhouette
detector and the s h a d i n g computations more accurate
and the r e s u l t i n g image is significantly improved.
F i g u r e 1 shows a bicubic patch, and F i g u r e 2 shows a
typical subdivision of the same patch.
F l a t n e s s t e s t i n g for a surface defined by Bezier
or B-spline techniques t a k e s a d v a n t a g e of the convex
hull properties of the surface control mesh. One can
compute the plane defined by t h r e e of the four corner
vertices of the control mesh very easily. F r o m there,
the distance of each point in the mesh to the plane
m a y be calculated and compared with the user-
specified flatness tolerance. If the control mesh lies
w i t h i n this tolerance, t h e n the convex hull p r o p e r t y
g u a r a n t e e s t h a t the surface will also be within the
s a m e tolerance.
6. Bicubic Patches and Boundary Equations
The general form for a b i v a r i a t e p a r a m e t r i c
cubic surface C(u,v) is:
[u3u2ul] MPMT [v3v2v1]T
where M and P depend on t h e defining d a t a for the
surface. P could contain points in a Bezier control
mesh, the bicubic position, derivative, and cross-
derivative data, or any of several other d a t a forms.
The M's are chosen appropriately, in order to convert
the convenient d a t a form to b i v a r i a t e power basis
representation. The power basis form is the basic
internal surface r e p r e s e n t a t i o n used in this
algorithm; m a n y other r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s can be
converted easily to this form. Most commonly, the P
m a t r i x contains t h r e e components (x, y, and z) and so
C(u,v) is a t h r e e - d i m e n s i o n a l point.
For scanline rendering, it is useful to have a
267
u n i v a r i a t e description of each b o u n d i n g edge of the
patch. This is easily derived from the s t a n d a r d
b i v a r i a t e coefficient m a t r i x Q = M P MT as follows:
C(u,0) = edgeo(t)
=[t3t2tl] [Q] [ 0 0 0 1 ] W
C(u,1) = edgel(t)
=[t3t2tl] [Q] [ l l l l ] T
The expressions for C(0,v) and C(1,v) are similar.
F o u r coefficients are required to describe a cubic
curve, and these can easily be computed from the Q
m a t r i x . The coefficients for edgel(t), for example, are
s u m m a t i o n s of the rows of Q.
7. Normal Coefficient Calculation
The four edge curves derived in the l a s t section
enable us to r e n d e r a scanline i m a g e for a patch
without shading. However, s h a d i n g information is
crucial; a r a s t e r r e n d e r i n g is useless without s h a d i n g
information. Shades depend on the n o r m a l to the
surface at each point a n d so a method of d e t e r m i n i n g
or a p p r o x i m a t i n g the n o r m a l a t each point on the
surface is required. The development below follows
C a t m u l l [3].
In order to m a k e the discussion simpler (in
t e r m s of notation), the following a b b r e v i a t i o n s are
defined, together with s i m i l a r ones for V:
U =[u 3 u 2 u 1]
U ' = [3u2 2u i 0 ]
U"= [6u 2 0 0]
It is easy to obtain expressions for the
derivatives of the x-component of the surface as
follows (where Mx is t h e x component of the coefficient
m a t r i x for the surface):
X = U MxV
dX(u,v)/du = X u = U ' Mx V
dX(u,v)/dv = Xv = U Mx V'
The equations for t h e y and z components are
analogous to those for the x component.
A n expression can be derived for the surface
which describes the surface n o r m a l at each point (u,v).
This can be achieved by computing the cross-product
of the u and v d e r i v a t i v e s of the surface. Thus,
[ Xn Yn Zn ]
= [ X u , Yu, Z u ] X [ X v , Yv, Zv]
= [ YuZv - YvZu,
ZuXv - XuZv,
X u Y v - YuXv]
The first component of the n o r m a l vector can be
r e w r i t t e n as
Xn(u,v)
= YuZv - YvZu
- (U'MyV)(UMzV') - (UMyV')(U'MzV)
This can be seen to be a quintic expression in u
and v. We chose to approximate the quintic normal
surface by a cubic in order to simplify the
computation, and so t h a t the r e n d e r i n g system could
t r e a t positional and n o r m a l information in a uniform
way. Note t h a t this m a y not be appropriate for some
surfaces in which there are major u n d u l a t i o n s in the
s h a d i n g across the patch. This is one of the points
where the preprocessing subdivision step has a
profound influence on the quality of the shading in
the r e s u l t i n g image.
A cubic approximation can be derived by u s i n g
the H e r m i t e data (corner positions, derivatives in
each direction at the corners, and cross-derivatives at
the corners). The m a t r i x for this data is:
dXn
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
dXn/dv
where the elements in each q u a d r a n t are evaluations
of the functions at the corners of the patch.
Expressions for Xn(u,v), dXn/du(u,v),
dXn/dv(u,v), and d2Xn/dudv(u,v) are easily derived.
Xn(u,v) -
(U'MyV)(UMzV') - (UMyV')(U'MzV)
dXn(u,v)/du =
(U"MyV)(UMzV') + (U'MyV)(U'MzV')
- (U'MyV')(U'MzV) - (UMyV')(U"MzV)
dXn(u,v)/dv =
(U'MyV')(UMzV') + (U'MyV)(UMzV")
- (UMyV")(U'MzV) - (UMyV')(U'MzV')
d2Xn(u,v)/dudv =
(U"MyV')(UMzV') + (U"MyV)(UMzV")
+ (U'MyV')(U'MzV') + (U'MyV)(U'MzV")
(U'MyV")(U'MzV) - (U'MyV')(U'MzV')
- (UMyV")(U"MzV) - (UMyV')(U"MzV')
If these equations are evaluated at the points
(0,0), (0,1), (1,0) and (1,1), t h e n the components of the
m a t r i x listed above can be filled in. Computing C P
CT where C is
2-2 1 1
-3 3 -2 -1
0 0 1 0
1 0 0 0
transforms the bivariate Hermite data into the
i n t e r n a l form.
This is the x-component of the m a t r i x of
coefficients for the cubic approximation to the surface
n o r m a l at each point. Similar computations m a y be
used for the y and z components. U n i v a r i a t e edge
n o r m a l coefficients are derived in exactly the same
m a n n e r as before for the positional data. This
r e p r e s e n t a t i o n allows edges to be traced and n o r m a l s
to be interpolated between the edges to render
smooth-shaded images in scanline order.
8. Silhouette Determination
The silhouette edges of a surface, if it contains
any, are defined as those curves on the surface along
which the z-component of the normal vector is zero
(assuming the eye is on the z axis). In image space,
this corresponds to the normal vector lying in the
dXn/dv plane of the display screen. The algorithm uses a set
of intersection routines developed by the Alpha _ 1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
group at the U n i v e r s i t y of U t a h for intersecting B-
spline surfaces. The intersection procedure is based
d2Xn/dudv on the Oslo Algorithm [4], which is used to add knots
to B-spline curves. The Oslo Algorithm can be applied
to performing fast subdivision of B-spline surfaces.
The use of subdivision to produce the intersection
curve of two B-spline surfaces is outlined as
"Application 3" in [4].
To compute a silhouette edge, the cubic
approximation of the normal surface and the z = 0
plane are converted to the spline representation used
by the A l p h a _ l group. This provides a surface
r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the n o r m a l s at each point on the
surface. E v a l u a t i o n of the normal surface at a
p a r a m e t r i c point (u,v) yields the normal vector of the
geometric surface at the point (u,v). The intersection
algorithm then uses fast subdivision and the convex
hull property of B-spline meshes to determine a set of
points which lie on the intersection line of the two
n o r m a l surfaces. The parametric (u,v) values are t h e n
evaluated with the surface equation to determine a
corresponding set of points on the surface which
represent the actual silhouette in screen space.
F u r t h e r , connecting these points with straight lines is
g u a r a n t e e d to be w i t h i n a user-specified tolerance of
the true silhouette. Figures 3 and 4 show patches
with silhouette edges.
9. Curved-Edge Polygon Creation
After the silhouette edges are determined, it is
necessary to organize the collection of cubic edges into
closed "curved-edge polygons" for rendering.
I n t u i t i v e l y , this involves dividing the patch into
separate pieces which are single valued in the z
component. Practically, the problem of p a i r i n g edges
into closed sections is more difficult t h a n one m i g h t
first suppose.
The algorithm used to accomplish this grouping
is a n "edge chasing" method which joins edges
together u n t i l they form a closed curved-edge polygon
268
and t h e n outputs t h a t polygon. One edge of the
b o u n d a r y or silhouette is selected first to s t a r t the
curved-edge polygon. Then t h e edge (silhouette or
boundary) which joins it next is added to the polygon.
If the first edge were a b o u n d a r y edge, the succeeding
edge m i g h t be the next b o u n d a r y edge, or a silhouette
edge t h a t intersects the b o u n d a r y edge. The edge-
chasing continues until all the b o u n d a r y edges and
silhouette edges have been added to closed polygons.
This method is a d a p t e d from the philosophy t h a t one
can always get t h r o u g h a maze by keeping one's r i g h t
h a n d on a wall and m a k i n g t u r n s accordingly
(assuming the maze has only one e n t r y and exit).
Similarly, by a l w a y s m a k i n g "right" t u r n s w h e n e v e r
a new curve is encountered, the a l g o r i t h m is
g u a r a n t e e d to produce closed polygons. The definition
of a "right" t u r n is dependent on which b o u n d a r y edge
one is t u r n i n g on (e.g. on the v = 0 boundary, a
"right" t u r n is toward the end with the l a r g e r u
value).
One a s s u m p t i o n made in this approach is t h a t
all silhouettes intersect b o u n d a r y curves on both ends.
As s t a t e d earlier, this is a poor assumption to m a k e
for the general case. However, because the silhouette
detector finds all intersecting and non-intersecting
silhouettes, the silhouette list can be preprocessed to
create artificial intersections for the non-intersecting
silhouettes. An artificial intersection is an extension
of the silhouette in an a p p r o p r i a t e direction until a
b o u n d a r y is crossed. These artificial edges have no
effect on the final image, but do provide a m e a n s of
a c c u r a t e l y subdividing a patch with i n t e r n a l
silhouettes.
10. Monotonicity of Edges in Y
One final preprocessing step r e m a i n s to be
performed on the set of edges which form the curved-
edge polygons. Each edge in the curved-edge polygon
is tested for y-monotonicity by t a k i n g the derivative of
the cubic edge equation and solving the q u a d r a t i c
formula for the r e s u l t i n g coefficients. The results a r e
p a r a m e t r i c values of m i n i m a and m a x i m a on the
edge. If the r e s u l t i n g values lie within the p a r a m e t r i c
r a n g e of the edge, the edge is subdivided. The
subdivision is e x t r e m e l y simple. The cubic positional
and n o r m a l coefficients of the edge are merely copied
and the p a r a m e t r i c r a n g e of the two r e s u l t i n g edges
are adjusted so t h a t the two edges together cover the
entire r a n g e of the original edge, b u t each new edge is
monotonic in y.
11. Rendering Steps
In this section, the basic r e n d e r i n g method for
the simplified patch described above is discussed. The
patch has no silhouette edges and the edges are
monotonic in y.
In order to r e n d e r curved-edge polygon objects
on a p a r t i c u l a r scanline, a s t a n d a r d scanline
a l g o r i t h m places the edges on the s t a r t - l i s t s and
active-list. Then, the edges on the active list are
p a i r e d off from the left of the screen to the r i g h t of the
screen and the pixels between t h e m are drawn.
In order to d r a w between two edges, the
intersection with the c u r r e n t scanline m u s t be
269
determined. Since the y v a l u e of the edge is known
(ie. it is j u s t the v a l u e of the scanline), the cubic
equation can be solved for the y-component to discover
the p a r a m e t r i c value (t) of the edge for t h a t y. As in
W h i t t e d ' s algorithm, a Newton i t e r a t i o n is used for
this. A l t h o u g h in g e n e r a l Newton i t e r a t i o n m a y be
unstable, it is quite effective for cubic edges which a r e
monotonic in y. Also, if the p a r a m e t r i c (t) value which
was discovered on the l a s t scanline is saved, then the
i n i t i a l value can be a v e r y good approximation.
Once the p a r a m e t r i c (t) value of the edge on the
scanline is obtained, e v a l u a t i o n of the x value of the
edge on the scanline is performed by using the
p a r a m e t r i c value w i t h the stored edge coefficients.
The s a m e p a r a m e t r i c value yields the x, y, and z
components of the n o r m a l vector to the surface at t h a t
point.
The b e g i n n i n g and ending positions of the
curved-edge polygon on the c u r r e n t scanline have
been d e t e r m i n e d , as have the n o r m a l s at each
endpoint. A simple method of d r a w i n g the scanline
s e g m e n t is to i n t e r p o l a t e the n o r m a l vectors across
the covered a r e a of the scanline and e v a l u a t e the
s h a d i n g value at each pixel. Both a l i n e a r and a cubic
interpolation scheme have been implemented. The
l i n e a r n o r m a l i n t e r p o l a t i o n between two edges of a
curved-edge polygon t u r n e d out to be unsatisfactory in
m a n y cases, because the n o r m a l of a curved-edge
polygon does not necessarily change l i n e a r l y across a
scanline. The preprocessing subdivision of the patch
until it reaches some specified flatness criterion
reduces the problem to a s m a l l e r scale b u t does not
solve it. However, using a cubic r a t h e r t h a n l i n e a r
n o r m a l i n t e r p o l a t i o n improved the shading of the
surface considerably. The required information for
performing a cubic H e r m i t e interpolation across the
scanline between two edges of the curved-edge
polygon is fairly easily computed. Once a n o r m a l is
d e t e r m i n e d for each pixel, it is converted to an
i n t e n s i t y value using Blinn's l i g h t i n g model [1].
F i g u r e s 5 and 6 show a surface shaded with
l i n e a r and cubic n o r m a l interpolation. Each shows
both a top view and a side view to b e t t e r i l l u s t r a t e
how the patch curves in z. L i n e a r interpolation
a s s u m e s a constant change in the n o r m a l direction.
Thus F i g u r e 5 (with t h e light source from the right)
has the h i g h l i g h t in the wrong position since the
n o r m a l is not c h a n g i n g l i n e a r l y across the patch.
Cubic interpolation m a k e s use of derivative
information along the edge, and so it b e t t e r
a p p r o x i m a t e s the n o r m a l change. This can be seen by
the position of the h i g h l i g h t in F i g u r e 6.
12. Miscellaneous Implementation Remarks
As mentioned before, the hidden surface
problem m a y be ignored w i t h i n each curved-edge
polygon because it contains no silhouette edges.
However, the hidden surface problem m u s t still be
solved between i n d i v i d u a l curved-edge polygons.
Because an entire i m a g e is rendered in one pass
t h r o u g h the scanlines, a scanline z-buffer is used to
d e t e r m i n e which surface is visible.
The c u r r e n t i m p l e m e n t a t i o n uses bicubic Bezier
surfaces as the e x t e r n a l interface to the system.
There are several reasons for selecting the Bezier
representation. The Bezier control mesh provides a
rough approximation to the surface, and thus makes
designing test cases relatively simpler and more
intuitive than if some other representation had been
chosen. A second factor is that the subdivision process
which was described is very easily implemented for
Bezier patches. Further, the Bezier representation is
actually a special case of cubic B-splines. Extension of
the algorithm to bicubic B-spline surfaces would only
involve converting the control mesh to the internal
power basis representation.
13. Conclusion
One disadvantage to the rendering algorithm
described is that it is limited to bicubic patches. This
would not be a particularly serious constraint,
because much design work is done with cubics (or
even quadratics), except for the fact that the normal
surface to a cubic surface is quintic. A cubic
approximation to the normal surface may be
unsuitable in some cases, but subdivision alleviates
the problem to a great extent.
A second disadvantage is that the silhouette
detection is complicated by the fact that the normal
surface of the patch is often degenerate, but again, the
subdivision step is quite effective in minimizing this
problem.
Advantages of the implemented algorithm are
of two types: those concerning the use of a scanline
algorithm, and those dealing with the rendering of
curved edges rather than polygonal approximations.
Scanline algorithms are generally faster than other
techniques by making use of scanline coherence to
quickly calculate position and shading information.
The previous scanline position is used as a first
approximation for the Newton iteration solution.
References
1. Blinn, J. F. "Models of Light Reflection for
Computer Synthesized Pictures". In Proceedings of
SIGGRAPH '77, ACM, July 1977, pp. 192-198.
2. Blinn, J. F. Computer Display of Curved Surfaces,
Ph.D. Thesis, University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
Utah, December 1978. Also Tech. Report No.
1060-126, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
California.
3. Catmull, E. E. A Subdivision Algorithm for
Computer Display of Curved Surfaces, Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, December
1974. Also Tech. Report No. UTEC-CSc-74-133,
Department of Computer Science, University of Utah.
4. Cohen, E.; Lyche, T.; and Riesenfeld, R. F.
"Discrete B-splines and Subdivision Techniques in
Computer-Aided Geometric Design and Computer
Graphics", Computer Graphics and Image Processing,
Vol. 14, No. 2, October 1980, pp. 87-111. Also Tech.
Report No. UUCS-79-117, Department of Computer
Science, University of Utah, October 1979.
5. Lane, J. M.; Carpenter, L. C.; Whitted, J. T.; and
Blinn, J. F. "Scan Line Methods for Displaying
Parametrically Defined Surfaces", Communications of
the ACM, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 23-34.
6. Riesenfeld, R. F.; Cohen, E.; Fish, R. D.; Thomas,
S. W.; Cobb, E. S.; Barsky, B. A.; Schweitzer, D. L.;
and Lane, J. M. "Using the Oslo Algorithm as a Basis
for CAD/CAM Geometric Modelling". In NCGA '81
Conference Proceedings, National Computer Graphics
Association, Inc., June 1981, pp. 345-356.

Curved edge rendering eliminates the polygonal

boundary problem which plagues man.y surface
rendering schemes. The problem arises from
approximating curved edges with polygons, resulting
in visible "corners" appearing along patch boundaries.
The patches rendered with this algorithm do not have
this problem. Another advantage of curved-edge
polygons is the relative size of the patch that can be
rendered without subdivision. In a polygonal
approximation, it is necessary to attempt to model the
surface as several flat pieces, often resulting in an
extremely large number of objects for a highly curved
area. Since the algorithm described in this paper uses
a cubic to approximate the normal for shading, a
single curved-edge polygon can represent a relatively
large area with significant curvature.

14. Acknowledgement
We wish to thank Spencer W. Thomas for the
use of his B-spline surface intersector. His
implementation of that algorithm comprises the
essential part of our silhouette edge detector.

270
Figure 1. Bicubic patch. Figure 2. Subdivided bicubic patch.

Figure 3. Patch with simple silhouette edge. Figure 4. Patch with complex silhouette edge.

Figure 5. Example of linear normal interpolation. Figure 6. Example of cubic normal interpolation.

271