Ray Tracing Acceleration Schemes Based on Efficient Data Storage

효율적인 데이터 저장을 기초로 한 광선 추적의 가속화 방안

This paper presents two new storage schemes of 3-D objects to accelerate the finding of the first intersecting object and the shadow computation steps in ray tracing. The 3-D objects which are potentially intersected with the first reflection (refraction)ray are enrolled within a so called reflection (refraction) frustum' for a polygon object. Only those objects registered in the corres ponding frustum are immediately checked for intersection with the secondary rays emanating from the same polygon. The other is called a shadow pyramid' which contains the candidate objects possibly blocking the path from the relevant light source to any point on the relevant polgon. The shadow testing of a point is performed only against the objects contained in the associated shadow pyramid. Despite the cost needed for registration of objects within frusta or shadow pyramids, the total rendering time of ray tracing using the proposed approaches was reduced by approximately 50% (10% in color rendering time and 70% in shadoe testing time) from the conventional cell 50% (10% in color rendering time and 70% in shadow testing time) from the conventional cell traversal scheme under the 3-D uniform subdivision environment due to the fast finding of candidate objects for intersection and the reduced number of intersection calculations.