Accelerating ray tracing using constrained tetrahedralizations

Abstract

Tracing a ray through a scene and finding the closest intersection with the scene geometry is a fundamental operation in computer graphics. During the last two decades, significant efforts have been made to accelerate this operation, with interactive ray tracing as one of the major driving forces. At the heart of a fast method for intersecting a scene with a ray lies the acceleration structure. Many different acceleration structures exist, but research has focused almost exclusively on a few well-tried and well-established techniques: regular and hierarchical grids, bounding volume hierarchies and kd-trees. Spectacular advances have been made, which have contributed significantly to making interactive ray tracing a possibility. However, despite the success of these acceleration structures, several problems remain open. Handling deforming and dynamic geometry still poses significant challenges, and the local vs. global complexity of acceleration structures is still not entirely understood. One therefore wonders whether other acceleration structures, that leave the beaten path of efficient grids, bounding volume hierarchies and kd-trees, can provide viable alternatives.