GIT-GVU-92-01

Geometric Simplification for Indirect Illumination Calculations

Holly Rushmeier
Charles Patterson
Aravindan Veerasamy

We present a new method for accelerating global illumination calculations in the generation of physically accurate images of geometrically complex environments. In the new method, the environment geometry is simplified by eliminating small isolated surfaces and replacing clusters of small surfaces with simple, optically equivalent boxes. A radiosity solution is performed on the simplified geometry. The radiosity solution is then used in a multi-pass method to estimate the radiances responsible for indirect illumination. We present a preliminary implementation of the new method and some initial images and timing results. The initial results indicate that using simplified geometries for indirect illumination calculations produces images in times significantly less than previous path tracing and multi-pass methods without a reduction in image quality.

Algorithms, image generation, three-dimensional graphics, geometric simplification, global illumination, radiosity, ray tracing

PDF

Postscript