And then, if the actual surface is defined by a polygon or a spline, the fun will actually start when trying to find the accurate hitpoint.
Damned. Instead of polygon it should have said polynomial.
It the combination of the 2, a 20,000 polygon model with high levels of shaders will still render up far faster than a 2 million polygon model, because there's only 1% of the number of objects in the scene being calculated for.
This is true, but given the context of either polynomial or spline surface, the numbers are more even. This is because there is a lot more to calculate when determining ray hitpoints when surfaces are parameterized by functions.
I would believe that rendering splines is where the computer graphics will be going next. This is because a model needs a lot less control points (i.e. memory usage) when it is represented by spline, rather than a polygon, and it is more easier to blend it, or to deform it smoothly, without adding points on the fly. The surfaces will appear continous even when zooming close. But I'm not sure about the texture maps if they could avoid pixelization there. Some strange effects would also be visible when applying textures since there actually are smooth bumps in the models. On the contrary, separating two pieces from a single control point mesh is harder when there is a requirement that the pieces should be cut along that arc and should preserve their shape. It could be difficult to make it look like something blew up with those models.
The limiting factor with splines is computing power. Current papers state something like a 100000 control points object being rendered 5 frames/second, but this needed a couple of standard PC computers, and I suppose, not that accurate ray-tracing.
Mika
