article

Real-time soft shadows in dynamic scenes using spherical harmonic exponentiation

Authors:

Peter-Pike Sloan,

Baining GuoAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 25, Issue 3

Pages 977 - 986

https://doi.org/10.1145/1141911.1141982

Published: 01 July 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Previous methods for soft shadows numerically integrate over many light directions at each receiver point, testing blocker visibility in each direction. We introduce a method for real-time soft shadows in dynamic scenes illuminated by large, low-frequency light sources where such integration is impractical. Our method operates on vectors representing low-frequency visibility of blockers in the spherical harmonic basis. Blocking geometry is modeled as a set of spheres; relatively few spheres capture the low-frequency blocking effect of complicated geometry. At each receiver point, we compute the product of visibility vectors for these blocker spheres as seen from the point. Instead of computing an expensive SH product per blocker as in previous work, we perform inexpensive vector sums to accumulate the log of blocker visibility. SH exponentiation then yields the product visibility vector over all blockers. We show how the SH exponentiation required can be approximated accurately and efficiently for low-order SH, accelerating previous CPU-based methods by a factor of 10 or more, depending on blocker complexity, and allowing real-time GPU implementation.

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Cited By

Xu YJiang YZhang JLi KGeng G(2022)Real-Time Ray-Traced Soft Shadows of Environmental Lighting by Conical Ray CullingProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/35226175:1(1-15)Online publication date: 4-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3522617
Sheng YLiu YZhang JYin WOztireli AZhang HLin ZShechtman EBenes B(2022)Controllable Shadow Generation Using Pixel Height MapsComputer Vision – ECCV 202210.1007/978-3-031-20050-2_15(240-256)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20050-2_15
Wu LCai GZhao SRamamoorthi R(2020)Analytic spherical harmonic gradients for real-time rendering with many polygonal area lightsACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339237339:4(134:1-134:14)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392373
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Index Terms

Real-time soft shadows in dynamic scenes using spherical harmonic exponentiation
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
      1. Computer vision tasks
  2. Computer graphics
    1. Image manipulation
      1. Texturing
    2. Shape modeling
2. Theory of computation
  1. Randomness, geometry and discrete structures

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 25, Issue 3

July 2006

742 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/1141911

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 01 July 2006

Published in TOG Volume 25, Issue 3

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Cited By

Xu YJiang YZhang JLi KGeng G(2022)Real-Time Ray-Traced Soft Shadows of Environmental Lighting by Conical Ray CullingProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/35226175:1(1-15)Online publication date: 4-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3522617
Sheng YLiu YZhang JYin WOztireli AZhang HLin ZShechtman EBenes B(2022)Controllable Shadow Generation Using Pixel Height MapsComputer Vision – ECCV 202210.1007/978-3-031-20050-2_15(240-256)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20050-2_15
Wu LCai GZhao SRamamoorthi R(2020)Analytic spherical harmonic gradients for real-time rendering with many polygonal area lightsACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339237339:4(134:1-134:14)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392373
Currius RDolonius DAssarsson USintorn E(2020)Spherical Gaussian Light‐field Textures for Fast Precomputed Global IlluminationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1391839:2(133-146)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13918
Lin DYuksel C(2019)Real-Time Rendering with Lighting Grid HierarchyProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/33213612:1(1-17)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3321361
Le BHalen HGonzalez-Ochoa CLewis JAndrews STatarchuk N(2019)High-quality object-space dynamic ambient occlusion for characters using Bi-level regressionProceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games10.1145/3306131.3317029(1-10)Online publication date: 21-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3306131.3317029
Wang JRamamoorthi R(2018)Analytic spherical harmonic coefficients for polygonal area lightsACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3197517.320129137:4(1-11)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3197517.3201291
Kaiser AYbanez Zepeda JBoubekeur T(2018)A Survey of Simple Geometric Primitives Detection Methods for Captured 3D DataComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1345138:1(167-196)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13451
Chistyakov AShabiev S(2018)Real-time formation of photorealistic images for architectural environment visualization in virtual reality systemsIOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering10.1088/1742-6596/451/1/012133451(012133)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/451/1/012133
Li WWei WShi M(2018)A novel all-frequency spherical harmonic lighting technique for 5G networksComputers & Electrical Engineering10.1016/j.compeleceng.2018.03.04968(252-261)Online publication date: May-2018
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2018.03.049
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