Incremental instant radiosity for real-time indirect illumination

  • Authors:
  • Samuli Laine;Hannu Saransaari;Janne Kontkanen;Jaakko Lehtinen;Timo Aila

  • Affiliations:
  • NVIDIA Research and Helsinki University of Technology;Helsinki University of Technology;PDI/DreamWorks and Helsinki University of Technology;Helsinki University of Technology and Remedy Entertainment;NVIDIA Research and Helsinki University of Technology

  • Venue:
  • EGSR'07 Proceedings of the 18th Eurographics conference on Rendering Techniques
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

We present a method for rendering single-bounce indirect illumination in real time on currently available graphics hardware. The method is based on the instant radiosity algorithm, where virtual point lights (VPLs) are generated by casting rays from the primary light source. Hardware shadow maps are then employed for determining the indirect illumination from the VPLs. Our main contribution is an algorithm for reusing the VPLs and incrementally maintaining their good distribution. As a result, only a few shadow maps need to be rendered per frame as long as the motion of the primary light source is reasonably smooth. This yields real-time frame rates even when hundreds of VPLs are used.