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I have a triangulated surface that I want to work with. In order to optimize certain quantities related to this surface I want to find all points which are accessible from a given direction. To be more precise, let's denote by $S_h$ the surface and by $B$ the body enclosed by $S_h$. Given a direction $\vec d \in \Bbb{R}^3$ I want to find all points $x \in S_h$ such that the semi-line starting at $x$ going in the direction of $\vec d$ does not intersect $S_h$ a second time. An analogue way of saying this is given a direction $\vec d$ I want to find all the points which can be "seen" looking at $S_h$ from that direction.

I have the feeling that this could be something which is known in the field of computational geometry, but maybe I don't know the right terminology in order to find relevant references.

Is there an algorithm which is not too costly to implement in order to find all "visible points" from a certain direction? Do you know references dealing with efficient algorithmical implementation?

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    $\begingroup$ Every computer graphics program has to solve this sort of problem. Have you looked at computer graphics or CGI books? Specifically, I believe that that's what the Z-Buffer is used for. $\endgroup$
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 1:48
  • $\begingroup$ It's called "backface culling" or "occlusion culling". A simple alternative could be to "iterate" through all vertices or triangles and verify that the angle between the surface normal and the view direction is less than 90 degrees. $\endgroup$
    – André
    Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 10:10
  • $\begingroup$ @André: Thank you for mentioning the terminology. The version with the angle between the normal and the view direction only works for convex shapes. You can imagine that if a hole is present, looking only at normals may say that some regions are visible, while they are not... $\endgroup$
    – Beni Bogosel
    Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 10:11

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As far as I understand, you are looking at some variation of ray tracing algorithm. Such problems will be very common for geometrical optics to determine the direct line of sight. Example:visible surface ray tracing (ray casting)

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