ABSTRACT
Often times, bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs) are described as the opposite of spatial partitioning schemes, such as quadtrees or Binary space partitioning trees. BVHs are mostly used to prevent performing an operation exhaustively on all objects. Almost all queries that can be implemented with other space partitioning schemes can also be answered using BVHs. There are three characteristic properties of bounding volumes (BVs): tightness, memory usage, and the number of operations needed to test the query object against a bounding volume. Often, one must make a trade-off between these properties, because generally, the type of BV that offers better tightness also requires more operations per query and more memory. This chapter describes the construction of BVHs. Essentially, there are three strategies to build BVHs: bottom-up, top-down, and insertion. The chapter discusses a general criterion that can guide the splitting process of top-down BVH construction algorithms.
