A fast front-to-back hidden surface algorithm

摘要

A hidden-surface algorithm for polygonal scenes is presented. The algorithm performs in screen space, and can be embedded in standard (hardware or software) polygon scan-conversion with little effort. First, a sorting pass is applied to the faces. Then, the faces are rendered in a front-to-back order. Our algorithm provides a considerable speedup with respect to other hidden-surface algorithms, especially when shading is applied. Cyclic overlap problems are avoided through a very fast and robust sorting technique that determines the geometrical priorities of faces in 3D space.