Subdivision curve interrogation

A useful subdivision curve interface provides parameter ranges, endpoint and limit evaluation, derivatives, subdivision into equivalent restricted pieces, a certified bounding volume, and a certified error relative to a chord. Positive subdivision masks often give a convex hull bound. Masks with negative coefficients need a separate enclosing bound; their control-point hull need not enclose the limit curve.

At a regular differentiable interior nearest point of a parametric curve, the displacement from the query point is perpendicular to the tangent vector. A branch and bound search uses distances to certified enclosing bounding volumes as lower bounds, and evaluated limit points as upper bounds. Refine the most promising restricted pieces until the upper bound differs from the global lower bound by the chosen distance tolerance. Safeguarded Newton root-finding iteration accelerates local candidates, but endpoints, nonregular points, ties and other stationary branches must not be omitted.

For a point light at $L$, the shadow of a curve point is the first surface intersection on its ray beyond that point. Certified patch bounds and subdivision isolate intersections; regular hits are corrected with a three-variable Newton method solve. Differentiating the displayed equation gives $[S_u,S_v,-(C-L)](u^{\prime },v^{\prime },{\lambda }^{\prime }{)}^T=\lambda C^{\prime }$, a predictor for continuation along the shadow. Surface boundaries and grazing rays require clipping and reseeding; every visible component must be isolated, rather than assumed detectable from a fixed sample of the casting curve.

For an oriented plane function $\ell$, certified extrema over a bounding volume allow a subdivision curve piece to be rejected when $\max \ell <0$, or wholly retained when $\min \ell \ge 0$. Otherwise subdivide. At an explicitly chosen rendering tolerance, a sufficiently flat, sufficiently short piece can be replaced by its clipped chord. This is an approximation, not a proof of exact crossing topology. Exact treatment of tangent contacts and small excursions requires root isolation of $\ell (C(t))$ and splitting into sign-constant intervals, when the curve representation supports such isolation.