A method is presented. The method includes organizing a scene as a number of bounding volumes in a hierarchical data structure. The method also includes generating a grid based on the hierarchical data structure. The method further includes mapping each node of the hierarchical data structure to at least one cell of the grid. The method additionally includes identifying a cell of the grid corresponding to an initial intersection location of a ray and the scene. The method still further includes determining a non-root node of the hierarchical data structure as a start node for traversing the hierarchical data structure based on the identified cell. The method also includes traversing the hierarchical data structure starting from the start node to identify a number a primitives intersected by the ray.