Bán, RóbertValasek, GáborBálint, CsabaVad, Viktor A.Haines, EricGarces, Elena2024-06-252024-06-252024978-3-03868-262-21727-3463https://doi.org/10.2312/sr.20241146https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/sr20241146Per-pixel displacement mapping provides an alternative to high-fidelity geometry and flat textured faces with in-between performance costs. Although cone maps are known to facilitate efficient and robust rendering of height fields, we show that these cannot guarantee robustness under bilinear interpolation, and we propose corrections to this issue. First, we define an artifactfree minimum step size for the cone map tracing algorithm while remaining comparable in performance to that of Dummer. Second, we modify the cone map generation procedure so that at bilinearly interpolated values the unbounding cones remain disjoint from the heightmap, thereby preventing another source of rendering artifacts. Third, we introduce an exact method to generate relaxed cones such that any ray within intersects the heightmap at most once, in contrast to the original algorithm that is both computationally more expensive and generates incorrect relaxed cones. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of these algorithm improvements with visual and performance comparisons in our C++ and HLSL implementation.Attribution 4.0 International LicenseCCS Concepts: Computing methodologies -> Ray tracing; Shape modelingCCS ConceptsComputing methodologies> Ray tracingShape modelingRobust Cone Step Mapping10.2312/sr.202411467 pages