A Survey on Exploiting Grids for Ray Tracing

Abstract

Grid is one of the first data structure introduced at the very beginning of computer graphics. Grids are used in several applications of computer graphics, especially in rendering algorithms. Lately, in ray tracing dynamic scenes, grid has received attention for its appealing linear time building time. In this paper, we aim to survey several aspects behind the use of grids in ray tracing. In particular we investigate grid traversal algorithms, building techniques and several approaches for hierarchical grids.