An Error Estimation Framework for Many-Light Rendering
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Date
2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Abstract
The popularity of many-light rendering, which converts complex global illumination computations into a simple sum of the illumination from virtual point lights (VPLs), for predictive rendering has increased in recent years. A huge number of VPLs are usually required for predictive rendering at the cost of extensive computational time. While previous methods can achieve significant speedup by clustering VPLs, none of these previous methods can estimate the total errors due to clustering. This drawback imposes on users tedious trial and error processes to obtain rendered images with reliable accuracy. In this paper, we propose an error estimation framework for many-light rendering. Our method transforms VPL clustering into stratified sampling combined with confidence intervals, which enables the user to estimate the error due to clustering without the costly computing required to sum the illumination from all the VPLs. Our estimation framework is capable of handling arbitrary BRDFs and is accelerated by using visibility caching, both of which make our method more practical. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can estimate the error much more accurately than the previous clustering method.
Description
@article{10.1111:cgf.13040,
journal = {Computer Graphics Forum},
title = {{An Error Estimation Framework for Many-Light Rendering}},
author = {Nabata, Kosuke and Iwasaki, Kei and Dobashi, Yoshinori and Nishita, Tomoyuki},
year = {2016},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.},
ISSN = {1467-8659},
DOI = {10.1111/cgf.13040}
}