[comp.graphics] What's in the field of view?

rww@esl.UUCP (Richard W. Webb) (03/15/88)

Hello Octree Experts,

	I am working on a distributed rendering system.  My current
    renderer runs on multiple machines, each of which has its own
    copy of the 3D scene.  From the controlling host, I want to display
    the scene on my screen.  To do this, I divide up the screen into
    small regions, and direct each machine to work on a particular
    sub-region.
	
	The problem I am facing is that now I want to do animation.
    This means the whole 3D database has to be changed on each machine.
    When I get around to ray-tracing, I will have to do this, but for
    simple shading models I should only need to send that portion of the
    database that is visible in a particular sub-region.

	I have the scene organized in an octree and have considered
    some solid modeling operations to extract the voxels inside the
    viewing pyramid.  Any extra pointers would be appreciated.  The
    primary concern is simplicity and speed, a few extra voxels from
    rounding errors is OK.  Code would be super.

	Thanks.

P.S.  I cannot distribute code at this time, but in the future.... $-)


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