Hidden surface removal for axis-parallel polyhedra

Abstract

An efficient, output-sensitive method for computing the visibility map of a set of axis-parallel polyhedra (i.e. polyhedra with their faces and edges parallel to the coordinate axes) as seen from a given viewpoint is introduced. For nonintersecting polyhedra with n edges in total, the algorithm runs in time O((n+k)log n), where k is the complexity of the visibility map. The method can handle cyclic overlap of the polyhedra and perspective views without any problem. For c-oriented polyhedra (with faces and edges in c orientations, for some constant c) the method can be extended to run in the same time bound. The method can be extended even further to deal with intersecting polyhedra with only a slight increase in the time bound.<>