Real-Time Global Illumination Using Temporal Coherence

Information

• Publication Type: Master Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Rendering and Modeling
• Date: July 2009
• Diploma Examination: 28. July 2009
• First Supervisor:
  • Michael Wimmer
  • Oliver Mattausch
• Keywords: Real Time Rendering, Global Illumination, Instant Radiosity, Temporal Coherence

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to produce plausible global illumination in real time using temporal coherence. While direct illumination combined with precomputed static global illumination is widely used in today’s computer games and 3D applications, real-time global illumination that supports arbitrary dynamic scenes and light setups is still an active area of research. This master thesis gives an introduction to global illumination and discusses various methods that have been developed. However, since most of the existing methods need some kind of precomputation to calculate global illumination in real time, they also introduce limitations like static light, scenes or view points. Furthermore other algorithms are not suitable for the capabilities of current graphics hardware or are simply fake approaches. The core of this thesis is an improved version of the instant radiosity and imperfect shadow maps algorithm that reuses illumination information from previous frames. The previous approaches needed a high number of so called virtual point lights to get convincing results, whereas our method achieves visually pleasing results with only a few virtual point lights. As a second extension to the base algorithms we introduce a new method to compute multiple light bounces. In this method the fill rate is drastically reduced and therefore computation time is much lower than in previous aproaches.

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BibTeX

@mastersthesis{knecht-2009-MKN,
  title =      "Real-Time Global Illumination Using Temporal Coherence",
  author =     "Martin Knecht",
  year =       "2009",
  abstract =   "The goal of this thesis is to produce plausible global
               illumination in real time using temporal coherence. While
               direct illumination combined with precomputed static global
               illumination is widely used in today’s computer games and
               3D applications, real-time global illumination that supports
               arbitrary dynamic scenes and light setups is still an active
               area of research. This master thesis gives an introduction
               to global illumination and discusses various methods that
               have been developed. However, since most of the existing
               methods need some kind of precomputation to calculate global
               illumination in real time, they also introduce limitations
               like static light, scenes or view points. Furthermore other
               algorithms are not suitable for the capabilities of current
               graphics hardware or are simply fake approaches. The core of
               this thesis is an improved version of the instant radiosity
               and imperfect shadow maps algorithm that reuses illumination
               information from previous frames. The previous approaches
               needed a high number of so called virtual point lights to
               get convincing results, whereas our method achieves visually
               pleasing results with only a few virtual point lights. As a
               second extension to the base algorithms we introduce a new
               method to compute multiple light bounces. In this method the
               fill rate is drastically reduced and therefore computation
               time is much lower than in previous aproaches.",
  month =      jul,
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  keywords =   "Real Time Rendering, Global Illumination, Instant Radiosity,
               Temporal Coherence",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2009/knecht-2009-MKN/",
}