An adaptive forward differencing algorithm is presented for rapid rendering of cubic curves and bicubic surfaces. This method adjusts the forward difference step size so that approximately one pixel is generated along an ordinary or rational cubic curve for each forward difference step. The adjustment involves a simple linear transformation on the coefficients of the curve which can be accomplished with shifts and adds. This technique combines the advantages of traditional forward differencing and adaptive subdivision. A hardware implementation approach is described including the adaptive control of a forward difference engine. Surfaces are rendered by drawing many curves spaced closely enough together so that no pixels are left unpainted. A simple curve anti-aliasing algorithm is also presented in this paper. Anti-aliasing cubic curves is supported via tangent vector output at each forward difference step. The adaptive forward differencing algorithm is also suitable for software implementation.

We present several techniques for implementing Phong shading in hardware for bicubic patches. Patches are shaded, not by subdividing into polygons, but by drawing many curves close together leaving no pixel gaps. Each curve is drawn using an adaptive forward difference algorithm which generates the coordinates as well as the shading parameters as cubic functions incrementally evaluated along the curve. The forward difference step size is adaptively adjusted so that it generates approximately one pixel along the curve per forward difference step. The hardware implements Phong shading directly with a surprisingly simple configuration built from general purpose compute units and look-up tables. Two new methods are presented for deriving bicubic approximations to the shading parameters over a bicubic patch. One method uses two Coons patches to approximate the unnormalized N·L, and N·H, and a third Coons patch for N·N, where N is the surface normal, L is the light direction, and H is the direction of maximum highlight. In this case the hardware performs the normalization per pixel. The second method uses two Coons patches to approximate the normalized dot products N·L, and N·H. The method is suitable for both hardware and software implementations.