On ray tracing parametric surfaces

A new method for ray tracing parametric surfaces is presented. The new algorithm solves the ray surface intersection directly using multivariate Newton iteration. This provides enough generality to render surfaces which could not be ray traced using existing methods. To overcome the problem of finding a starting point for the Newton algorithm, techniques from Interval Analysis are employed. The results are presented in terms of solving a general nonlinear system of equations f(x)= 0, and thus can be extended to a large class of problems which arise in computer graphics.