Rasterizing complex polygons without tessellations

Abstract

Rasterization of polygons is a basic operation in computer graphics systems, representing the last and most time-consuming step in the visualization process. Therefore, the development of simple, efficient, and general polygon rasterization techniques is of prime interest. In this paper, we describe a new algorithm for this purpose, inspired on the ideas of the geometric modeling based on simplicial chains [Computer and Graphics 5 (1998) 611]. This algorithm is valid for any kind of polygon, is robust and extremely simple, and can be easily implemented in hardware. A similar approach can be used for the problem of polihedra voxelization in 3D.