Abstract
Luminaire sampling plays an important role in global illumination calculation using Monte Carlo integration. A conventional approach generates samples on the surface of the luminaire, resulting in rendered images with high variance of noise. In this paper, we present an efficient solid angle sampling technique using tunable bounding volumes for global illumination calculation. In contrast to the conventional approach, our technique derives samples from the solid angle subtended by the luminaire. In the construction process, we build a convex, frustum-like polyhedron as a bounding volume for a light source. Front-facing polygons of the bounding volume are then projected onto the unit hemisphere around the shaded point. These projected polygons represent the approximated solid angle subtended by the luminaire. The third step samples the projected spherical polygons on which a number of stratified samples are generated. We employ various types of light sources including ellipse, elliptic cylinder, elliptic cone and elliptic paraboloid. We perform our technique for Monte Carlo Direct Lighting and Monte Carlo Path Tracing applications. Under similar sample numbers, our technique produces images with less variance of noise compared to the conventional method. In addition, our technique provides roughly equal image quality in less execution time. Our approach is simple, efficient, and applicable to many types of luminaries for global illumination calculation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arvo, J.: Stratified Sampling of Spherical Triangles. In: Mair, S.G., Cook, R. (eds.) Proc. 22nd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pp. 437–438 (1995)
Heckbert, P.S.: Introduction to Global Illumination. In: Thomas, J.J. (ed.) Proc. 19th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Global Il-lumination Course (1992)
Kajiya, J.T.: The Rendering Equation. In: Evans, D.C., Athay, R.J. (eds.) Proc. 13th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pp. 143–150 (1986)
Kolb, C., Hanrahan, P., Mitchell, D.: A Realistic Camera Model for Computer Graph-ics. In: Mair, S.G., Cook, R. (eds.) Proc. 22nd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pp. 317–324 (1995)
Lafortune, E.: Mathematical Model and Monte Carlo Algorithm for Physically based Ren-dering. Ph.D. thesis, Leuven University (1996)
Mood, A.M., Graybill, F.A., Boes, D.C.: Introduction to the Theory of Statistics. McGraw-Hill, Singapore (1974)
Pattanaik, S.N., Mudur, S.P.: Computation of Global Illumination in a Participating Medium by Monte Carlo Simulation. The Journal of Visualization and Computer Anima-tion 4(3), 133–152 (1993)
Rubinstein, R.Y.: Simulation and the Monte Carlo Method. John Wiley & Sons, New York (1981)
Shirley, P., Wang, C.: Direct Lighting Calculation by Monte Carlo Integration. In: Bru-ent, P., Jansen, F.W. (eds.) Proc. 2nd Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, pp. 54–59 (1991)
Shirley, P., Wang, C., Zimmerman, K.: Monte Carlo Techniques for Direct Lighting Calculation. ACM Trans. Graph 15(1), 1–36 (1996)
Shirley, P.: Monte Carlo Methods in Rendering. In: Cunningham, S., Bransford, W., Cohen, M.F. (eds.) Proc. 25th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Course Note 5: A Basic Guide to Global Illumination, pp. 9-1–9-26 (1998)
Shreider, Y.A.: The Monte Carlo Method. Pergamon Press, New York (1996)
Turk, G.: Generating Random Points in Triangles. In: Glassner, A.S. (ed.) Graphics Gems, pp. 24–28. Academic Press, New York (1990)
Urena, C.: Computation of Irradiance from Triangles by Adaptive Sampling. Comput. Graph. Forum 19(2), 165–171 (2000)
Veach, E., Guibas, L.J.: Metropolis Light Transport. In: Owen, G.S., Whitted, T., Mones-Hattal, B. (eds.) Proc. 24th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Inter-active Techniques, pp. 65–76 (1997)
Wang, C.: Physically Correct Direct Lighting for Distribution Ray Tracing. In: Kirk, D. (ed.) Graphics Gems III, pp. 307–313. Academic Press, New York (1992)
Wang, C.: The Direct Lighting Computation in Global Illumination Methods. Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University (1993)
Zimmerman, K.: Direct Lighting Models for Ray Tracing with Cylindrical Lamps. In: Paeth, A.W. (ed.) Graphics Gems V, pp. 285–289. Academic Press, New York (1995)
Zimmerman, K.: Density Prediction for Importance Sampling in Realistic Image Synthe-sis. Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tsai, YY., Wang, CM., Chang, CH., Cheng, YM. (2006). Tunable Bounding Volumes for Monte Carlo Applications. In: Gavrilova, M., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications - ICCSA 2006. ICCSA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3980. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11751540_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11751540_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-34070-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-34071-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)