Automatic Creation of Object Hierarchies for Ray Tracing

Intersection calculations dominate the run time of canonical ray tracers. A common algorithm to reduce the number of intersection tests required is the intersection of rays with a tree of extents, rather than the whole database of objects. A shortcoming of this method is that these trees are difficult to generate. Additionally, manually generated trees can be poor, greatly reducing the run-time improvement available. We present methods for evaluation of these trees in approximate number of intersection calculations required and for automatic generation of good trees. These methods run in O(nlogn) expected time where n is the number of objects in the scene. We report some examples of speedups

The Iray Light Transport Simulation and Rendering System

While ray tracing has become increasingly common and path tracing is well understood by now, a major challenge lies in crafting an easy-to-use and efficient system implementing these technologies. Following a purely physically-based paradigm while still allowing for artistic workflows, the Iray light transport simulation and rendering system allows for rendering complex scenes by the push of a button and thus makes accurate light transport simulation widely available. In this document we discuss the challenges and implementation choices that follow from our primary design decisions, demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable, and efficient real-world application that has been adopted by various companies across many fields and is in use by many industry professionals today

An implementation of ray tracing algorithm for the multiprocessor machines

Ray Tracing is an algorithm for generating photo-realistic pictures of the 3D scenes, given scene description, lighting condition and viewing parameters as inputs. The algorithm is inherently convenient for parallelization and the simplest parallelization scheme is for the shared-memory parallel machines (multiprocessors). This paper presents two implementations of the algorithm developed by the authors for alike machines, one using the POSIX threads API and another one using the OpenMP API. The paper also presents results of rendering some test scenes using these implementations and discusses our parallel algorithm version efficiency

Structured Mesh Generation : Open-source automatic nonuniform mesh generation for FDTD simulation

This article describes a cuboid structured mesh generator suitable for 3D numerical modelling using techniques such as finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) and transmission-line matrix (TLM). The mesh generator takes as its input an unstructured triangular surface mesh such as is available from many CAD systems, determines a suitable variable mesh discretisation and generates solid and surface meshes in a format suitable for import by the numerical solver. The mesher is implemented in the MATLAB language and is available as open source software

Object partitioning considered harmful : space subdivision for BVHs

A major factor for the efficiency of ray tracing is the use of good acceleration structures. Recently, bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs) have become the preferred acceleration structures, due to their competitive performance and greater flexibility compared to KD trees. In this paper, we present a study on algorithms for the construction of optimal BVHs. Due to the exponential nature of the problem, constructing optimal BVHs for ray tracing remains an open topic. By exploiting the linearity of the surface area heuristic (SAH), we develop an algorithm that can find optimal partitions in polynomial time. We further generalize this algorithm and show that every SAH-based KD tree or BVH construction algorithm is a special case of the generic algorithm. Based on a number of experiments with the generic algorithm, we conclude that the assumption of non-terminating rays in the surface area cost model becomes a major obstacle for using the full potential of BVHs. We also observe that enforcing space subdivision helps to improve BVH performance. Finally, we develop a simple space partitioning algorithm for building efficient BVHs

Object Hierarchies for Efficient Rendering

This thesis covers the efficient visualization of complex 3d scenes using various rendering methods such as photo-realistic and real-time rendering. Especially the important role of bounding volume hierarchies is discussed in detail in the context of illumination and visibility algorithms. We present a novel approach for automatic generation of object hierarchies and apply the resulting data structure to several rendering techniques. In the field of ray tracing we describe a novel ray acceleration method that combines objects hierarchies and regular grids. We demonstrate how radiosity computations may benefit from available scene hierarchies to determine the radiant flux between object clusters. Finally, we present an adaptive interactive rendering algorithm that may dramatically reduce the number of visibility tests in an occlusion culling framework for interactive real-time visualization.Diese Dissertation untersucht unterschiedliche Verfahren zur effizienten Visualisierung grosser dreidimensionaler Szenengeometrien, sowohl im Bereich des Photorealismus wie auch bei der Echtzeit-Visualisierung. Hierbei wird insbesondere die Nützlichkeit von Hüllkörperhierarchien bei der Beleuchtungsrechnung und bei der Beantwortung von Sichtbarkeitsfragen herausgearbeitet. Ein neuartiges, kostenbasiertes Verfahren zur automatischen Konstruktion von Objekthierarchien wird präsentiert sowie dessen Anwendung für alle gängigen Darstellungsverfahren. Zusätzlich beschreibt diese Disseration im Bereich Ray Tracing ein neues Verfahren zur Szenenstrukturierung, welches die Vorteile von Hüllkörperhierarchien und regulären Gittern kombiniert. Im Bereich der Radiosity wird gezeigt, wie sich Szenenhierarchien ideal zur Berechnung des Lichtflusses zwischen Objekt-Clustern nutzen lassen und im Bereich Echtzeit-Rendering wird ein adaptives Verfahren vorgestellt, dass die Zahl teurer Sichtbarkeitstests beim Occlusion-Culling deutlich reduziert

Tighter bounding volumes for better occlusion culling performance

Bounding volumes are used in computer graphics to approximate the actual geometric shape of an object in a scene. The main intention is to reduce the costs associated with visibility or interference tests. The bounding volumes most commonly used have been axis-aligned bounding boxes and bounding spheres. In this paper, we propose the use of discrete orientation polytopes (\kdops) as bounding volumes for the specific use of visibility culling. Occlusion tests are computed more accurately using \kdops, but most importantly, they are also computed more efficiently. We illustrate this point through a series of experiments using a wide range of data models under varying viewing conditions. Although no bounding volume works the best in every situation, {\kdops} are often the best, and also work very well in those cases where they are not the best, therefore they provide good results without having to analyze applications and different bounding volumes

Bounding Volume Hierarchies for Collision Detection

In virtual environment world, performing collision detection between various 3D objects requires sophisticated steps to be followed in order to properly visualize their effect. It is challenging due to the fact that multiple objects undergo various motion depending on the application’s genre. It is however an essential challenge to be resolved since it’s many use in the computer animation, simulation and robotic industry. Thus, object intersection between rigid bodies has become one of the most important areas in order to bring realism to simulation and animation