Introduction

Curves can be used to render large numbers of thin strands of geometry very efficiently, making this primitive particularly well-suited for modeling fur, hair, and blades of grass. This geometry type is an approximate representation, designed to render more efficiently in both time and memory compared to an equivalent surface of circular cross section. The trade-off is that when viewing curve geometry up close, there can sometimes be geometric artifacts; these artifacts tend to not be perceptible as the curves become more distant from the camera. RenderMan supports both flat (ribbon-like) and round (tube-like) curves, and it is possible to choose from a variety of basis functions.

Parameters

Width

The width of a curve can vary over the length of the curve. It is possible to specify a constant width that applies to all curve strands in the primitive, or widths can be specified to be different on a per-curve strand, per-vertex, or per-segment basis.

Varying Width (tapered width ranges from 0.005 to 0.0 along the length of each curve)	Constant Width (constant width of 0.005 along length of each curve)

Basis

Given a set of control points that the user supplies as vertices, which composes the hull of the curve, the basis function determines how the actual rendered curve appears. For example, some basis functions, such as the Catmull-Rom basis, guarantee that the rendered curve will pass through all interior, non-endpoint control vertices, whereas others, such as B-spline, typically do not pass exactly through any of the control vertices. Each basis function has different trade-offs in terms of smoothness, controllability and ease-of-use.

• Bezier - A Bezier basis generates a 3D curve that passes through every third control vertex. The remaining control vertex positions are used to determine the incoming and outgoing tangent of the curve of the adjacent vertex that the curve does pass through. When using a Bezier basis with curves that contain multiple segments (that is, more than 4 control points), some care should be taken to ensure that incoming and outcoming tangents line up at vertices that are on the rendered curve, or there will be a discontinuity in the smoothness of the curve where it suddenly changes direction.
• B-Spline - While a B-Spline basis function can be somewhat less intuitive to use in that it generates a curve that typically only approximately comes close to passing through the given control vertices, an advantage is that this basis function tends to yield very smooth curves. Discontinuities in the smoothness of the curve are possible if multiple control vertices are repeated consecutively.
• Catmull-Rom - This basis function generates a curve that is guaranteed to pass through every interior, non-endpoint control vertex, and it tends to generate smooth curves, although there can sometimes be unexpected "wobbles" in areas of high curvature with this basis function choice (see images below for an example). Using a B-Spline basis instead can smooth out the wobbles, although a B-Spline basis typically produces a curve that does not pass through the control vertices exactly, unlike the Catmull-Rom basis (for non-endpoint control vertices).
• Hermite - The Hermite basis function generates a curve that passes through every other control vertex; the remaining control "vertices" are actually vectors that determine the tangent of the curve. The length of the tangent vectors determines the amount of curvature; longer tangent vectors yield more curvature along the spline than shorter vectors. A Hermite basis function tends to produce smooth curves, although using a B-Spline basis can often yield qualitatively a more "natural" or uniform smoothness along the curve with comparatively less specification effort.
• Linear - Specifying linear curves yields straight line segments, which can result in gaps or other geometric artifacts when close to the camera (this may be acceptable for distant and/or very thin curves).

Mode

RenderMan supports both flat (ribbon-like) curves and round (tube-like) curves, demonstrated in the images below.

• Flat Curves - usually recommended for blades of grass or other geometry where the curve geometry is relatively more "ribbon-like" than tube-like in appearance. As seen in the image below, if user-normals are not specified with flat curves, then the ribbon-like curves are oriented to be perpendicular to the camera (or, in general, perpendicular to the incoming ray direction for indirect/shadow/photon rays). On the other hand, if user-normals are specified then flat curves will twist around so that their orientation always follows the user-specified normals (for both camera and other ray types). The difference between flat curves with and without user-specified normals is demonstrated in the example images below.
• Round Curves - typically recommended for hair and fur since this usually represents the underlying hair geometry with greater fidelity (although not in all cases), and as a direct consequence round curves do tend to produce a noticeably more accurate reproduction of occlusion and shadowing for fur and hair compared to flat curves. User normals must not be present when using round curves; if user-specified normals are provided, currently the user-normals will take precedence over the round curve attribute and as a result the curve will instead be rendered as a twisting ribbon-like curve that follows the user-specified normals (e.g., a flat curve). Currently, round curves tend to exhibit better time and memory performance compared to flat curves. It is highly dependent on the BxDF and shading model, but in some cases, the tube-like varying normal produced when using round curves can yield qualitatively more interesting shading results.