Hidden Surface Removal for Axis-Parallel Polyhedra (Extended Abstract)

In this paper we present a new, efficient, outputsensitive method for computing the visibility map of a set of axis-parallel polyhedra (i.e., polyhedra with their faces and edges parallel to the coordinate axes) as seen from a given viewpoint. For non-intersecting polyhedra with n edges in total, the algorithm runs in time O( (n + k) log n), where k is the complexity of the visibility map. The method can handle cyclic overlap of the polyhedra and perspective views without any problem. For c-oriented polyhedra (with faces and edges in c orientations, for some constant c) the method can be extended to run in the same time bound. The method can be extended even further to deal with intersecting polyhedra with only a slight increase in the time bound.