next up previous contents
Next: 11.1.4 Refraction Up: 11.1.3 Curved Reflectors Previous: 11.1.3.5 Reflectors of Mixed   Contents

11.1.3.6 Conclusions and Issues

Surfaces used in this algorithm must be tessellated sufficiently so that straight edges in the non-reflected scene form convincing curved reflections in the reflector. This may mean having to use some kind of hierarchical tessellation and error bounding or pre-tessellating the surface. The reflected objects have to be tessellated so that straight edges curve appropriately, but reflecting objects also must be tessellated so that the barycentric interpolation computed from the explosion map provides visually acceptable reflections.

On the other hand, because the existence of the reflected image may be enough to add the desired illusion of depth and location cuing, virtual objects typically can be rendered with less detail than the original objects, allowing both lower levels of detail and lower quality shading.

Both the texture mapping and stencil techniques discussed above can be used with this technique to mask away the portions of the reflected scene that are not actually visible.



2001-01-10