System for non-planar specular reflections in hybrid ray tracing

The present invention teaches a real-time hybrid ray tracing system for non-planar specular reflections. The high complexity of a non-planar surface is reduced to low complexity of multiple small planar surfaces. Advantage is taken of the planar nature of triangles that comprise building blocks of a non-planar surface. All secondary rays bouncing from a given surface triangle toward object triangles keep a close direction to each other. A collective control of secondary rays is enabled by this closeness and by decoupling secondary rays from primary rays. The result is a high coherence of secondary rays.