Computing exact rational offsets of quadratic triangular Bézier surface patches

The offset surfaces to non-developable quadratic triangular Bézier patches are rational surfaces. In this paper we give a direct proof of this result and formulate an algorithm for computing the parameterization of the offsets. Based on the observation that quadratic triangular patches are capable of producing C smooth surfaces, we use this algorithm to generate rational approximations to offset surfaces of general free–form surfaces.