This clearly written paper cites two reasons that make quadratic B-splines useful in animation:
(1) ease of patching curves by the control points, and
(2) hidden line elimination via algebraic formula.
Note however that it is not the authors’ intention to deal with more intricate problems of animation (realism, antialiasing, etc.). Indeed, the stills the authors reproduce from an animated film they made do not impress me in the least. (Unlike the authors, I believe that graphics research should strive for highest degree of realism. After all, this is why thousands attend the SIGGRAPH conference every year.) There are several appendices which study problems ranging from the trivial “fitting a parabola to 2 given points and a slope,” to the more enlightening “finding the intersections of 2 B-splines.”
