Sampling from Quadric-Based CSG Surfaces

Abstract

We present an efficient method to create samples directly on surfaces defined by constructive solid geometry (CSG) trees or graphs. The generated samples can be used for visualization or as an approximation to the actual surface with strong guarantees. We chose to use quadric surfaces as CSG primitives as they can model classical primitives such as planes, cubes, spheres, cylinders, and ellipsoids, but also certain saddle surfaces. More importantly, they are closed under affine transformations, a desirable property for a modeling system. We also propose a rendering method that performs local quadric ray-tracing and clipping to achieve pixel-perfect accuracy and hole-free rendering.