Fast Ray Tracing of Implicit Surfaces

A ray‐tracing algorithm is described for rendering implicit surfaces formed with C 1 ‐continuous bounded functions f ( x , y , z ). This class of functions includes such popular implicit models as blobby molecules, metaballs, soft objects and convolution surfaces. The algorithm employs analytical methods only, which makes it fast, robust, and numerically stable. An earlier version of this work was presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Implicit Surfaces held in Seattle in 1998.