Combined volume and surface rendering with global illumination caching

Šmajdek, Uroš (author), Lesar, Žiga (author), Marolt, Matija (author), Bohak, Ciril (author)

We present a combined volume and surface rendering technique with global illumination caching. Our approach uses volumetric path tracing to compute the global illumination volume and local shading models for rendering the isosurface. By joining both visualization approaches, we have enhanced the display and illumination of the surfaces while preserving physically realistic illumination of the participating media. To achieve real-time performance and avoid recomputing the image when the camera view changes, we compute the global illumination volume incrementally and defer the projection to a later step. We evaluated our technique by comparing different local shading models for isosurface rendering with the result of full volumetric path tracing and with the non-caching variant of our technique. Results show that the caching and non-caching variants perform comparably well, while the caching variant has the added benefit of being camera-view-independent. Additionally, we show that our approach emphasizes the surfaces within volumes better than volumetric path tracing.

• Language: English
• Keywords: irradiance caching, global illumination, volumetric data
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FRI - Faculty of Computer and Information Science
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 2491–2503
• Numbering: Vol. 40, iss. 4
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148270
• UDC: 004
• ISSN on article: 0178-2789
• DOI: 10.1007/s00371-023-02932-9
• COBISS.SI-ID: 157669379
• Publication date in RUL: 09.08.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: The visual computer
• Shortened title: Vis. comput.
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• ISSN: 0178-2789
• COBISS.SI-ID: 26606080

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: medpomnjenje obsevanja, globalna osvetlitev, volumetrični podatki