GPU-Based Global Illumination Using Lightcuts

Global Illumination aims to generate high quality images. But due to its highrequirements, it is usually quite slow. Research documented in this thesis wasintended to offer a hardware and software combined acceleration solution toglobal illumination. The GPU (using CUDA) was the hardware part of the wholemethod that applied parallelism to increase performance; the “Lightcuts”algorithm proposed by Walter (2005) at SIGGRAPH 2005 acted as the softwaremethod. As the results demonstrated in this thesis, this combined method offersa satisfactory performance boost effect for relatively complex scenes

Importance driven environment map sampling

In this paper we present an automatic and efficient method for supporting Image Based Lighting (IBL) for bidirectional methods which improves both the sampling of the environment, and the detection and sampling of important regions of the scene, such as windows and doors. These often have a small area proportional to that of the entire scene, so paths which pass through them are generated with a low probability. The method proposed in this paper improves this by taking into account view importance, and modifies the lighting distribution to use light transport information. This also automatically constructs a sampling distribution in locations which are relevant to the camera position, thereby improving sampling. Results are presented when our method is applied to bidirectional rendering techniques, in particular we show results for Bidirectional Path Tracing, Metropolis Light Transport and Progressive Photon Mapping. Efficiency results demonstrate speed up of orders of magnitude (depending on the rendering method used), when compared to other methods

Master of Science

thesisVirtual point lights (VPLs) provide an effective solution to global illumination computation by converting the indirect illumination into direct illumination from many virtual light sources. This approach results in a less noisy image compare to Monte Carlo methods. In addition, the number of VPLs to generate can be specified in advance; therefore, it can be adjusted depending on the scene, desired quality, time budget, and the available computational power. In this thesis, we investigate a new technique that carefully places VPLs for providing improved rendering quality for computing global illumination using VPLs. Our method consists of three different passes. In the first pass, we randomly generate a large number of VPLs in the scene starting from the camera to place them in positions that can contribute to the final rendered image. Then, we remove a considerable number of these VPLs using a Poisson disk sample elimination method to get a subset of VPLs that are uniformly distributed over the part of the scene that is indirectly visible to the camera. The second pass is to estimate the radiant intensity of these VPLs by performing light tracing starting from the original light sources in the scene and scatter the radiance of light rays at a hit-point to the VPLs close to that point. The final pass is rendering the scene, which consists of shading all points in the scene visible to the camera using the original light sources and VPLs

Sequential Monte Carlo Instant Radiosity

Instant Radiosity and its derivatives are interactive methods for efficiently estimating global (indirect) illumination. They represent the last indirect bounce of illumination before the camera as the composite radiance field emitted by a set of virtual point light sources (VPLs). In complex scenes, current algorithms suffer from a difficult combination of two issues: it remains a challenge to distribute VPLs in a manner that simultaneously gives a high-quality indirect illumination solution for each frame, and does so in a temporally coherent manner. We address both issues by building, and maintaining over time, an adaptive and temporally coherent distribution of VPLs in locations where they bring indirect light to the image. We introduce a novel heuristic sampling method that strives to only move as few of the VPLs between frames as possible. The result is, to the best of our knowledge, the first interactive global illumination algorithm that works in complex, highly-occluded scenes, suffers little from temporal flickering, supports moving cameras and light sources, and is output-sensitive in the sense that it places VPLs in locations that matter most to the final result

Efficient From-Point Visibility for Global Illumination in Virtual Scenes with Participating Media

Sichtbarkeitsbestimmung ist einer der fundamentalen Bausteine fotorealistischer Bildsynthese. Da die Berechnung der Sichtbarkeit allerdings äußerst kostspielig zu berechnen ist, wird nahezu die gesamte Berechnungszeit darauf verwendet. In dieser Arbeit stellen wir neue Methoden zur Speicherung, Berechnung und Approximation von Sichtbarkeit in Szenen mit streuenden Medien vor, die die Berechnung erheblich beschleunigen, dabei trotzdem qualitativ hochwertige und artefaktfreie Ergebnisse liefern

Sequential Monte Carlo Instant Radiosity

The focus of this thesis is to accelerate the synthesis of physically accurate images using computers. Such images are generated by simulating how light flows in the scene using unbiased Monte Carlo algorithms. To date, the efficiency of these algorithms has been too low for real-time rendering of error-free images. This limits the applicability of physically accurate image synthesis in interactive contexts, such as pre-visualization or video games. We focus on the well-known Instant Radiosity algorithm by Keller [1997], that approximates the indirect light field using virtual point lights (VPLs). This approximation is unbiased and has the characteristic that the error is spread out over large areas in the image. This low-frequency noise manifests as an unwanted 'flickering' effect in image sequences if not kept temporally coherent. Currently, the limited VPL budget imposed by running the algorithm at interactive rates results in images which may noticeably differ from the ground-truth. We introduce two new algorithms that alleviate these issues. The first, clustered hierarchical importance sampling, reduces the overall error by increasing the VPL budget without incurring a significant performance cost. It uses an unbiased Monte Carlo estimator to estimate the sensor response caused by all VPLs. We reduce the variance of this estimator with an efficient hierarchical importance sampling method. The second, sequential Monte Carlo Instant Radiosity, generates the VPLs using heuristic sampling and employs non-parametric density estimation to resolve their probability densities. As a result the algorithm is able to reduce the number of VPLs that move between frames, while also placing them in regions where they bring light to the image. This increases the quality of the individual frames while keeping the noise temporally coherent — and less noticeable — between frames. When combined, the two algorithms form a rendering system that performs favourably against traditional path tracing methods, both in terms of performance and quality. Unlike prior VPL-based methods, our system does not suffer from the objectionable lack of temporal coherence in highly occluded scenes

Sequential Monte Carlo Instant Radiosity

Instant Radiosity and its derivatives are interactive methods for efficiently estimating global (indirect) illumination. They represent the last indirect bounce of illumination before the camera as the composite radiance field emitted by a set of virtual point light sources (VPLs). In complex scenes, current algorithms suffer from a difficult combination of two issues: it remains a challenge to distribute VPLs in a manner that simultaneously gives a high-quality indirect illumination solution for each frame, and to do so in a temporally coherent manner. We address both issues by building, and maintaining overtime, an adaptive and temporally coherent distribution of VPLs in locations where they bring indirect light to the image. We introduce a novel heuristic sampling method that strives to only move as few of the VPLs between frames as possible. The result is, to the best of our knowledge, the first interactive global illumination algorithm that works in complex, highly-occluded scenes, suffers little from temporal flickering, supports moving cameras and light sources, and is output-sensitive in the sense that it places VPLs in locations that matter most to the final result

Techniques for efficient global illumination through virtual point lights

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2022, Director: Ricardo Jorge Rodrigues Sepúlveda Marques[en] Global illumination is the task that aims to add realism to the modeling of light in 3D scenes, all this encompasses a set of algorithms that make it possible. These algorithms take into account, in addition to the light coming directly from a light source (direct illumination), the light rays that come from the same source but have been through reflections on surfaces of the scene (reflective or not) ( indirect illumination). So this in computing science is a more complex term than it seems a priori, it refers not only to light sources, but to all the lighting conditions of the scene, that is, we have to take into account all the objects of the scene since each one will influence the others in one way or another with the light that it reflects, refracts or absorbs. To be more precise to calculate GI we need a description of the virtual scene which includes the position, size and orientation of the 3D geometric objects that compose the scene, the material associated with each object, the position and characteristics of the light sources which illuminate the scene, and a virtual camera that defines how a scene is seen. Once this is defined, one needs to compute/simulate how light is emitted from the light sources and bounces on the scene until it hits the image plane. The light that hits each pixel of the image will define the pixel color. To calculate all this lighting we need a very high computing capacity if we want to do it in a reasonable time, or some algorithms that optimize this calculation, and this is what we will deal with in this thesis. We will start by talking about the use of the Virtual Point Lights algorithm, also called Instant Radiosity by some authors. This algorithm is able to generate images of comparable quality to that of, for example, the Path Tracing (which is a standard algorithm in photo-realistic rendering). -We will explain how the VPLs algorithm works and how it is able to render an image in less time than Path Tracing and explain how the images are generated. Furthermore, we will also discuss the artifacts that are generated using the original virtual point lights and how to solve them. The core of this work is the acceleration of the original VPLs algorithm. To this end, we will resort to clustering techniques, which will allow us to drastically reduce the number of computations involved. In particular, we will provide details on the implementation of the K-means algorithm (a type of non-supervised learning) and its application in the context of VPLs-based image synthesis. We will show how K-means can be used to cluster the visible points from each pixel, and also to cluster the virtual light points. We provide detailed results using the four different algorithms: the original VPLs algorithm, which we have implemented from scratch; VPLs with K-means clustering of the visible points; VPLs using K-means clustering of the VPLsa; and, finally, the results when using both K-means clustering fo the visible points and of the VPLs. The results show clear improvements in image synthesis time. Finally we will present the results obtained from the perspective of the final image quality . We identify the main limitation of the methods developed, and propose improvements for future work

Polarization-Based Illumination Detection for Coherent Augmented Reality Scene Rendering in Dynamic Environments

A virtual object that is integrated into the real world in a perceptually coherent manner using the physical illumination information in the current environment is still under development. Several researchers investigated the problem producing a high-quality result; however, pre-computation and offline availability of resources were the essential assumption upon which the system relied. In this paper, we propose a novel and robust approach to identifying the incident light in the scene using the polarization properties of the light wave and using this information to produce a visually coherent augmented reality within a dynamic environment. This approach is part of a complete system which has three simultaneous components that run in real-time: (i) the detection of the incident light angle, (ii) the estimation of the reflected light, and (iii) the creation of the shading properties which are required to provide any virtual object with the detected lighting, reflected shadows, and adequate materials. Finally, the system performance is analyzed where our approach has reduced the overall computational cost

Iluminación global mediante progressive instant radiosity

La generación de imágenes sintéticas por ordenador es una técnica fuertemente asentada hoy en día en industrias muy diversas, desde la producción cinematográfica a la arquitectura, pasando por los videojuegos y el diseño gráfico. En particular, la síntesis de imágenes fotorrorealistas es un campo de trabajo que recibe enorme atención debido a la complejidad del problema, ya que requiere una simulación físicamente correcta de todas las posibles interacciones de la luz con el medio. Los algoritmos más utilizados para abordar el problema están basados en el muestreo estocásticos de caminos lumínicos, y son capaces de aproximar el transporte de luz de una manera precisa, de modo que son capaces de generar imágenes sintéticas indistinguibles de la realidad. Sin embargo, estos algoritmos tienen un alto coste computacional y requieren tiempos de procesamiento muy largos para producir resultados libres del ruido (varianza) introducido como consecuencia de su naturaleza estocástica. Existe una variante de estos algoritmos estocásticos que aproximan la irradiancia dentro de una escena mediante luces virtuales, denominados instant radiosity. Estos algoritmos presentan una convergencia considerablemente más rápida a imágenes libres de ruido, lo que ha propiciado su adopción en sectores como la industrial del cine, de los videojuegos, así como en numerosos softwares de previsualización de CAD, en detrimiento de otras técnicas. No obstante, a pesar de que estas técnicas son capaces de dar resultados precisos, a menudo se les aplican aproximaciones sesgadas con el fin de evitar ciertos artefactos visuales que afectan fuertemente a la calidad visual de las imágenes producidas. De este modo, se introduce un compromiso entre la varianza y el sesgo introducido por las aproximaciones. En este trabajo proponemos un algoritmo progresivo de naturaleza consistente, que aunque sesgado, converge en el límite a una solución sin varianza y sesgo. Para ello, estudiamos los algoritmos existentes alrededor de la idea de many lights, analizando la varianza que produce los indeseables artefactos visuales, y evaluando qué métodos sesgados existen para reducir dicha varianza: clamping y blur en el dominio espacial. Después, proponemos aproximaciones progresivas que reducen el sesgo en cada iteración del algoritmo, de modo que convergen a una solución sin ruido o sesgo en el límite. Investigaremos las técnicas aplicadas en otras aproximaciones sesgadas de la iluminación global basadas en transporte estocástico de partículas, y las aplicamos en el contexto de la iluminación mediante luces virtuales. Finalmente, desarrollamos una implementación los algoritmos desarrollados y observamos su eficiencia en escenas reales, comparándolos con las técnicas preexistentes y planteando futuros caminos de trabajo