An Efficient Algorithm for Ray Tracing

This paper presents a new algorithm that performs more efficient ray tracing compared to existing algorithms. This algorithm is based on the “divide-and-conquer” technique well known from the area of lists sorting, and speeds up the intersections and light-visibility tests for the first hit. A new definition of transitive-between-relations (TBR) is introduced. A simple shooting ray guide is embedded into a conventional ray tracer to reduce the number of intersection tests and thus speed-up the first hit calculation and the associated light conditions tests. The algorithm was tested in environments made up of convex polygons (random triangles, linearly positioned pyramids) but it can be used in environments with other primitives.