A Geometric Algorithm for Ray/Bézier Surfaces Intersection Using Quasi-Interpolating Control Net

In this paper, we present a new geometric algorithm to compute the intersection between a ray and a rectangular Bezier patch. The novelty of our approach resides in the use of bounds of the difference between a Bezier patch and its quasi-interpolating control net. The quasi-interpolating polygon of a Bezier surface of arbitrary degree approximates the limit surface within a precision that is function of the second order difference of the control points, which allows for very simple projections and 2D intersection tests to determine sub-patches containing a potential intersection. Our algorithm is simple, because it only determines a 2D parametric interval containing the solution, and efficient because the quasi-interpolating polygon is directly computed, which avoids both minimum or maximum evaluations of the basis functions or complex envelops construction.