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High-Fidelity Radiosity Rendering at Interactive Rates

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Rendering Techniques ’96 (EGSR 1996)

Part of the book series: Eurographics ((EUROGRAPH))

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Abstract

Existing radiosity rendering algorithms achieve interactivity or high fidelity, but not both. Most radiosity renderers optimize interactivity by converting to a polygonal representation and Gouraud interpolating shading samples, thus sacrificing visual fidelity. A few renderers achieve improved fidelity by performing a per-pixel irradiance “gather” operation, much as in ray-tracing. This approach does not achieve interactive frame rates on existing hardware.

This paper bridges the gap, by describing a data structure and algorithm which enable interactive, high-fidelity rendering of radiosity solutions. Our algorithm “factors” the radiosity rendering computation into two components: an offline phase, in which a per-surface representation of irradiance is constructed; and an online phase, in which this representation is rapidly queried, in parallel, to produce a radiosity value at each pixel. The key components of the offline phase are a heuristic discontinuity ranking algorithm, which identifies the strongest discontinuities, and a hybrid quadtree-mesh data structure which prevents combinatorial interactions between most discontinuities. The online phase involves a novel use of perspective-correct texture-mapping hardware to produce nonlinear, analytic shading effects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MIT Synthetic Imagery Group, USA

    Stephen Hardt & Seth Teller

Authors
  1. Stephen Hardt
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  2. Seth Teller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, University of Girona, Spain

    Xavier Pueyo

  2. Department of Computer Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

    Peter Schröder

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag/Wien1996

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Hardt, S., Teller, S. (1996). High-Fidelity Radiosity Rendering at Interactive Rates. In: Pueyo, X., Schröder, P. (eds) Rendering Techniques ’96. EGSR 1996. Eurographics. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-7484-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-7484-5_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-211-82883-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-7484-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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