Estimating Subdivision Depth of Catmull-Clark Surfaces

In this paper, both general and exponential bounds of the distance between a uniform Catmull-Clark surface and its control polyhedron are derived. The exponential bound is independent of the process of subdivision and can be evaluated without recursive subdivision. Based on the exponential bound, we can predict the depth of subdivision within a user-specified error tolerance. This is quite useful and important for pre-computing the subdivision depth of subdivision surfaces in many engineering applications such as surface/surface intersection, mesh generation, numerical control machining and surface rendering.