Lightcuts

• DOI: 10.1145/1073204.1073318
• Publication Date: 2005-11-07T16:00:45Z
• Authors: Bruce Walter; Sebastian Fernandez; Adam Arbree; Kavita Bala; Michael Donikian; Donald P. Greenberg
• Keywords: Global illumination; Bounding overwatch

Lightcuts is a scalable framework for computing realistic illumination. It handles arbitrary geometry, non-diffuse materials, and illumination from wide variety of sources including point lights, area HDR environment maps, sun/sky models, indirect At its core new algorithm accurately approximating many lights with strongly sublinear cost. We show how group can be cheaply approximated while bounding the maximum approximation error. A binary light tree perceptual metric are then used to adaptively partition into groups control error vs. cost tradeoff.We also introduce reconstruction cuts that exploit spatial coherence accelerate generation anti-aliased images complex Results demonstrated five scenes lightcuts approximate hundreds thousands using only few hundred shadow rays. Reconstruction reduce number rays tens.