A generic solution to polygon clipping

Reviewer: Shawn Neely

An improved algorithm for clipping one polygon to another is described. This fundamental operation in computer graphics is most often used to constrain drawing to a specified rectangular window, and it has already been successfully solved by a number of reasonably efficient algorithms, which are well known to anyone who has ever picked up a computer graphics textbook. The new developments presented in this paper, however, provide a solution that handles more cases and is more efficient than previously published methods, especially for the common case of filling polygons after clipping. Moreover, simple extensions for other Boolean operations between two polygons are presented. I would recommend this paper to teachers and students of introductory computer graphics, to persons specifically interested in rendering, and to anyone interested in implementing or optimizing a basic graphics pipeline.