Realistic Local Lighting in Dynamic Height Fields

Information

• Publication Type: Master Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Detailed Surfaces for Interactive Rendering
• Date: May 2013
• Date (Start): 18. February 2009
• First Supervisor:
  • Paul Guerrero
  • Michael Wimmer
• Keywords: Spherical Harmonics, Height Fields, Indirect Illumination

Abstract

This thesis presents a method to compute soft shadows from environment maps and local light sources on dynamic height fields, extending the work of Snyder et al. [29]. While direct illumination in static scenes is very common in video games and 3D applications, real-time global illumination methods supporting dynamic scenes and lights are still an active field of research.

In this work, a short general introduction to global illumination and spherical harmonics is presented as well as an overview of the state of the art methods in interactive global illumination for height fields.

In our method, visibility at each receiver point of a height field is determined by the visible horizon, which can be approximated efficiently using a multi-resolution sampling approach. Local light sources are represented by spherical lights and the incident radiance at receiver points is projected into the spherical harmonic basis. Hence, this method produces convincing shadows on dynamic height fields more efficiently than global illumination methods for general geometry.

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BibTeX

@mastersthesis{MeierStauffer-2013-iihf,
  title =      "Realistic Local Lighting in Dynamic Height Fields",
  author =     "Aaron Meier-Stauffer",
  year =       "2013",
  abstract =   "This thesis presents a method to compute soft shadows from
               environment maps and local light sources on dynamic height
               fields, extending the work of Snyder et al. [29]. While
               direct illumination in static scenes is very common in video
               games and 3D applications, real-time global illumination
               methods supporting dynamic scenes and lights are still an
               active field of research.  In this work, a short general
               introduction to global illumination and spherical harmonics
               is presented as well as an overview of the state of the art
               methods in interactive global illumination for height
               fields.  In our method, visibility at each receiver point of
               a height field is determined by the visible horizon, which
               can be approximated efficiently using a multi-resolution
               sampling approach. Local light sources are represented by
               spherical lights and the incident radiance at receiver
               points is projected into the spherical harmonic basis.
               Hence, this method produces convincing shadows on dynamic
               height fields more efficiently than global illumination
               methods for general geometry.",
  month =      may,
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  keywords =   "Spherical Harmonics, Height Fields, Indirect Illumination",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2013/MeierStauffer-2013-iihf/",
}