de Casteljau Algorithm for a Tensor-Product Bézier Surface

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System
Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.
This Demonstration shows three different ways of applying the de Casteljau algorithm to a tensor-product Bézier surface.
Contributed by: Isabelle Cattiaux-Huillard (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
A polynomial Bézier surface in tensor-product form is described by the formula
, where
are the control points of
; they form the control net of
.
In order to determine the point (for
and
), the de Casteljau algorithm can be used. For a polynomial Bézier curve
, (for
),
where are the control points, this algorithm calculates a current point
) by applying the following recurrence formula:
, for
to
,
, for
to
.
Finally, we obtain
.
In order to determine the point (for
and
), the de Casteljau algorithm can be applied to the surface in the following three ways:
First in the direction: by de Casteljau, we first determine the points
for
to
.
Next, the algorithm is used to compute
.
Second in the direction: analogously, we first determine the points
for
to
.
Then we compute
.
Simultaneously in the and
directions: this method is easier to use in the case where
:
for
to
and
to
,
, for
to
,
to
, and
to
,
yielding
.
If , the above procedure is applied in order to calculate
for
to
, and next the
direction method is used to compute the remaining iteration levels. The case
is treated analogously.
Permanent Citation