Article

Soft shadow volumes for ray tracing

Authors:

Jaakko Lehtinen,

Tomas Akenine-MöllerAuthors Info & Claims

SIGGRAPH '05: ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Papers

Pages 1156 - 1165

https://doi.org/10.1145/1186822.1073327

Published: 01 July 2005 Publication History

Abstract

We present a new, fast algorithm for rendering physically-based soft shadows in ray tracing-based renderers. Our method replaces the hundreds of shadow rays commonly used in stochastic ray tracers with a single shadow ray and a local reconstruction of the visibility function. Compared to tracing the shadow rays. our algorithm produces exactly the same image while executing one to two orders of magnitude faster in the test scenes used. Our first contribution is a two-stage method for quickly determining the silhouette edges that overlap an area light source, as seen from the point to be shaded. Secondly, we show that these partial silhouettes of occluders, along with a single shadow ray, are sufficient for reconstructing the visibility function between the point and the light source.

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Cited By

Wang ZHo TXiao YLeung C(2024)Temporal vectorized visibility for direct illumination of animated modelsComputational Visual Media10.1007/s41095-023-0339-310:6(1045-1062)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41095-023-0339-3
CHUN YOH K(2017)An Efficient Soft Shadow Mapping for Area Lights in Various Shapes and ColorsIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2016EDL8102E100.D:2(396-400)Online publication date: 2017
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2016EDL8102
Nowrouzezahrai DBaran IMitchell KJarosz W(2014)Visibility Silhouettes for Semi-Analytic Spherical IntegrationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1225733:1(105-117)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/cgf.12257
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Soft shadow volumes for ray tracing
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
      1. Image and video acquisition
        3D imaging
  2. Computer graphics

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGGRAPH '05: ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Papers

July 2005

826 pages

ISBN:9781450378253

DOI:10.1145/1186822

Editor:
Markus Gross
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 July 2005

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SIGGRAPH05: Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference

July 31 - August 4, 2005

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SIGGRAPH '05 Paper Acceptance Rate 98 of 461 submissions, 21%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,822 of 8,601 submissions, 21%

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Cited By

Wang ZHo TXiao YLeung C(2024)Temporal vectorized visibility for direct illumination of animated modelsComputational Visual Media10.1007/s41095-023-0339-310:6(1045-1062)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41095-023-0339-3
CHUN YOH K(2017)An Efficient Soft Shadow Mapping for Area Lights in Various Shapes and ColorsIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2016EDL8102E100.D:2(396-400)Online publication date: 2017
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2016EDL8102
Nowrouzezahrai DBaran IMitchell KJarosz W(2014)Visibility Silhouettes for Semi-Analytic Spherical IntegrationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1225733:1(105-117)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/cgf.12257
Woo APoulin P(2012)BibliographyShadow Algorithms Data Miner10.1201/b11901-9(197-238)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2012
https://doi.org/10.1201/b11901-9
Lacewell DBurley BBoulos SShirley P(2008)Raytracing prefiltered occlusion for aggregate geometry2008 IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing10.1109/RT.2008.4634616(19-26)Online publication date: Aug-2008
https://doi.org/10.1109/RT.2008.4634616
Xie FTabellion EPearce A(2007)Soft shadows by ray tracing multilayer transparent shadow mapsProceedings of the 18th Eurographics conference on Rendering Techniques10.5555/2383847.2383881(265-276)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2383847.2383881
Overbeck RRamamoorthi RMark W(2007)A real-time beam tracer with application to exact soft shadowsProceedings of the 18th Eurographics conference on Rendering Techniques10.5555/2383847.2383861(85-98)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2383847.2383861
Zhou FWang GWang H(2006)An efficient method for rendering detailed soft shadowProceedings of the First international conference on Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment10.1007/11736639_109(893-902)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/11736639_109

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