Caustics, Light Shafts, God Rays

Stefanie Prast, Anna Fruehstueck
Caustics, Light Shafts, God Rays
Content:

Information

Abstract

Lighting effects, such as caustics and light shafts are an important component of the rendering of global illumination images. The correct depiction of the interaction of light with different surfaces is crucial to the realism of any rendered scene. Dealing with the complexity of global illumination has long been among the biggest challenges in computer graphics, a problem that is even more prominent when it comes to rendering interactive environments. Particularly the simulation of caustics is a difficult task since they can only be rendered satisfactorily through techniques which trace the light from the illuminants. Several different techniques to speed up the process of rendering realistic global illumination effects have been developed. Among those are path tracing, ray tracing and photon mapping. Most stateof- the-art rendering techniques rely heavily on the computation power of the GPU. We wish to present a survey of current rendering techniques for approximating physically exact representations of caustics, light shafts and god rays.

Additional Files and Images

Additional files:
Thesis
Thesis




BibTeX

Download BibTeX-Entry
@bachelorsthesis{Prast_Stefanie_2013-CLG,
  title =      "Caustics, Light Shafts, God Rays",
  author =     "Stefanie Prast and Anna Fruehstueck",
  year =       "2013",
  abstract =   "Lighting effects, such as caustics and light shafts are an
               important component of the rendering of global illumination
               images. The correct depiction of the interaction of light
               with different surfaces is crucial to the realism of any
               rendered scene. Dealing with the complexity of global
               illumination has long been among the biggest challenges in
               computer graphics, a problem that is even more prominent
               when it comes to rendering interactive environments.
               Particularly the simulation of caustics is a difficult task
               since they can only be rendered satisfactorily through
               techniques which trace the light from the illuminants.
               Several different techniques to speed up the process of
               rendering realistic global illumination effects have been
               developed. Among those are path tracing, ray tracing and
               photon mapping. Most stateof- the-art rendering techniques
               rely heavily on the computation power of the GPU. We wish to
               present a survey of current rendering techniques for
               approximating physically exact representations of caustics,
               light shafts and god rays.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/186, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology",
  month =      feb,
  keywords =   "GPU, reflection, rendering, real-time, caustics, god rays,
               light effects, refraction",
  URL =        "http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2013/Prast_Stefanie_2013-CLG/",
}