Hi! Does anyone know about a source that discusses Bezier Patches, especially implementing Frustrum Culling and Intersection? Do you think Bezier Patches are a good way to draw terrain? Thanks

a very good book is dave eberly''s this goes into quite a bit of detail about curved surfaces.
http://www.magic-software.com/3DGameEngineDesign.html

bezier patches are a GREAT way to draw terrain there only problem is that they require quite a bit of CPU work.
IIRC nate miller is doing a bezier patch editor at the moment

http://members.xoom.com/myBollux

Try looking at these documents http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000530/sharp_01.htm and http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991027/deloura_02.htm. As always go to www.Google.com and search, there is a great deal of information out there.

Bezier surfaces are actually a bad idea for terrain. When it comes to LOD you are going to run into the issue of having cracks in your terrain because adjacent patches are subdivided to a different level. If you don''t care about that though, they would work great since you could just generate the triangles at certain LOD on startup and never have to do it again. Also, like zeek said, they will be expensive to calculate unless you cache them. For a terrain caching might not work since you will have a ton of patches and the memory usage could get out of hand. You would probably be better off using one of the heightmap methods that everyone seems to be using today. Try http://www.vterrain.org/ for lots of terrain info.

Nate Miller

Thanks for your replies!

For I started already working with bezier patches i''ll give it a chance and see what i get. Many thanks for your links!

Hyperion