Abstract:

This report is based on the paper titled “An

Efficient GPU-based Approach for Interactive
Global Illumination”. They are talking about a
GPU-based method for interactive global
illumination that integrates complex effects
such as multi-bounce indirect lighting, glossy
reflection, caustics and arbitrary specular
paths. Their method builds upon scattered
data sampling and interpolation on the GPU.
They start with raytraced shading points and Figure 1: Global illumination result rendered using our
partition them into coherent shading cluster algorithm. The user can dynamically manipulate any
part of the scene, including lighting, viewpoint,
using adaptive seeding followed by k-means. materials, and geometry, at 1.5 fps.
At each cluster center they apply final gather
indirect lighting, caustics and complex surface
to evaluate its incident irradiance using GPU-
reflections are important visual cues for the
based photon mapping. Their entire photon
perception of photorealism in synthesized
tree as a compact illumination cut. That’s why
images. The conventional CPU-based
it reduces the final gather cost for each ray.
algorithms the simulation costs of such effects
The sampled irradiance values are then
are often too high to permit dynamic
interpolated at all shading points to produce
interaction, where the user can
rendering. Their method exploits the spatial
simultaneously change the lighting, viewpoint,
coherence of illumination to reduce sampling
materials and geometry and expect accurate
cost. They sample sparsely and the
real-time feedbacks of such changes. With
distribution of sample points conforms to the
the rapidly increasing computation power of
underlying illumination changes. Their
modern GPUs much attention has been paid
method is both fast and preserves high
to exploiting the GPU to achieve interactive
rendering quality. Although the same
global illumination.
property has been exploited by previous
caching and adaptive sampling methods, Existing methods typically focus on a very
these methods typically require sequential limited set of illumination effects. For
computation of sample points, making them instance, GPU-based ambient occlusion,
ill-suited for the GPU. In contrast, they select author Shanmugam and Arikan,proposed a
sample points adaptively in a single pass, method on visually pleasant ambient
enabling parallel computation. As a result occlusion approximation running on real-time
their algorithm runs entirely on the GPU, graphics hardware. This method is a multi-
achieving interactive rates for scenes with pass algorithm that separates the ambient
complex illumination effects. occlusion problem into high-frequency,
detailed ambient occlusion and low-
frequency, distant ambient occlusion
Introduction: domains, both capable of running
independently and in parallel. It’s simulates
In computer graphics research interactive global shadowing effects but ignores
computation of global illumination is a major interreflections. Imperfect Shadow Maps for
challenge. Effect such as multi-bounce Efficient Computation of Indirect Illumination
author T.Ritschel, T. Grosch, M.H. Kim, H-
P.Seidel, C.Dachsbacher, J.Kautz, proposed a
method for interactive computation of
indirect illumination in large and fully dynamic
scenes based on approximate visibility
queries. This approach based on instant
radiosity and shadow mapping compute
single-bounce indirect lighting but ignore
caustics and multibounce interreflections.