Efficient Glossy Global Illumination with Interactive Viewing

The ability to perform interactive walkthroughs of global illumination solutions including glossy effects is a challenging open problem. In this paper we overcome certain limitations of previous approaches. We first introduce a novel, memory- and compute-efficient representation of incoming illumination, in the context of a hierarchical radiance clustering algorithm. We then represent outgoing radiance with an adaptive hierarchical basis, in a manner suitable for interactive display. Using appropriate refinement and display strategies, we achieve walkthroughs of glossy solutions at interactive rates for non-trivial scenes. In addition, our implementation has been developed to be portable and easily adaptable as an extension to existing, diffuse-only, hierarchical radiosity systems. We present results of the implementation of glossy global illumination in two independent global illumination systems.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: CGF
• Authors: Marc Stamminger, Annette Scheel, Xavier Granier, Frederic Perez-Cazorla, George Drettakis, François X. Sillion
• Keywords: CGF 2000, Challenging Open Problem, Global Illumination, Global Illumination Solutions