Interactive caustics using local precomputed irradiance

Bright patterns of light focused via reflective or refractive objects onto matte surfaces are called "caustics". We present a method for rendering dynamic scenes with moving caustics at interactive rates. This technique requires some simplifying assumptions about caustic behavior allowing us to consider it a local spatial property which we sample in a preprocessing stage. Storing the caustic locally limits caustic rendering to a simple lookup. We examine a number of ways to represent this data, allowing us to trade between accuracy, storage, run time, and precomputation time.

[1]  Maryann Simmons,et al.  The Holodeck interactive ray cache , 1999, SIGGRAPH '99.

[2]  Donald P. Greenberg,et al.  Interactive global illumination in dynamic scenes , 2002, SIGGRAPH.

[3]  Kenneth E. Torrance,et al.  Extending the radiosity method to include specularly reflecting and translucent materials , 1990, TOGS.

[4]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Multi-pass pipeline rendering: realism for dynamic environments , 1997, SI3D.

[5]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Illumination from curved reflectors , 1992, SIGGRAPH.

[6]  George Drettakis,et al.  Interactive Rendering using the Render Cache , 1999, Rendering Techniques.

[7]  Peter-Pike J. Sloan,et al.  Interactive ray tracing , 2005, SIGGRAPH Courses.

[8]  Pascal Mamassian,et al.  Illusory motion from shadows , 1996, Nature.

[9]  John F Nye,et al.  Natural focusing and fine structure of light: caustics and wave dislocations , 1999 .

[10]  Werner Purgathofer,et al.  A New Stochastic Radiosity Method for Highly Complex Scenes , 1995 .

[11]  Seth J. Teller,et al.  Radiance interpolants for accelerated bounded-error ray tracing , 1999, TOGS.

[12]  Min Chen,et al.  Theory and application of specular path perturbation , 2000, TOGS.

[13]  James T. Kajiya,et al.  The rendering equation , 1998 .

[14]  Tomoyuki Nishita,et al.  Method of displaying optical effects within water using accumulation buffer , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[15]  George Drettakis,et al.  Fast Global Illumination Including Specular Effects , 2000, Rendering Techniques.

[16]  Donald P. Greenberg,et al.  Modeling the interaction of light between diffuse surfaces , 1984, SIGGRAPH.

[17]  Backward Ray Tracing.  Backward Ray Tracing , 1986 .

[18]  Hans-Peter Seidel,et al.  Canned Lightsources , 1998, Rendering Techniques.

[19]  Donald P. Greenberg,et al.  The Irradiance Volume , 1998, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[20]  Philippe Bekaert,et al.  Hierarchical and stochastic algorithms for radiosity , 1999 .

[21]  Peter Shirley,et al.  Visual cues for imminent object contact in realistic virtual environments , 2000, Proceedings Visualization 2000. VIS 2000 (Cat. No.00CH37145).

[22]  Henrik Wann Jensen,et al.  Global Illumination using Photon Maps , 1996, Rendering Techniques.

[23]  Peter Shirley,et al.  The Light Volume: An Aid to Rendering Complex Environments , 1996, Rendering Techniques.

[24]  Jan Kautz,et al.  Precomputed radiance transfer for real-time rendering in dynamic, low-frequency lighting environments , 2002 .

[25]  Henrik Wann Jensen,et al.  Importance Driven Path Tracing using the Photon Map , 1995, Rendering Techniques.

[26]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Photon mapping on programmable graphics hardware , 2003, HWWS '03.

[27]  Donald P. Greenberg,et al.  A radiosity method for non-diffuse environments , 1986, SIGGRAPH.

[28]  Philipp Slusallek,et al.  Interactive Global Illumination using Fast Ray Tracing , 2002, Rendering Techniques.

[29]  Wolfgang Straßer,et al.  Real‐Time Caustics , 2003, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[30]  Marc Olano,et al.  Reflection space image based rendering , 1999, SIGGRAPH.