Probabilistic Visibility Evaluation for Direct Illumination

dc.contributor.authorBillen, Nielsen_US
dc.contributor.authorEngelen, Björnen_US
dc.contributor.authorLagae, Aresen_US
dc.contributor.authorDutré, Philipen_US
dc.contributor.editorNicolas Holzschuch and Szymon Rusinkiewiczen_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-28T15:36:54Z
dc.date.available2015-02-28T15:36:54Z
dc.date.issued2013en_US
dc.description.abstractThe efficient evaluation of visibility in a three-dimensional scene is a longstanding problem in computer graphics. Visibility evaluations come in many different forms: figuring out what object is visible in a pixel; determining whether a point is visible to a light source; or evaluating the mutual visibility between 2 surface points. This paper provides a new, experimental view on visibility, based on a probabilistic evaluation of the visibility function. Instead of checking the visibility against all possible intervening geometry, the visibility between 2 points is now evaluated by testing only a random subset of objects. The result is not a Boolean value that is either 0 or 1, but a numerical value that can even be negative. Because we use the visibility evaluation as part of the integrand in illumination computations, the probabilistic evaluation of visibility becomes part of the Monte Carlo procedure of estimating the illumination integral, and results in an unbiased computation of illumination values in the scene. Moreover, the number of intersections tests for any given ray is decreased, since only a random selection of geometric primitives is tested. Although probabilistic visibility is an experimental and new idea, we present a practical algorithm for direct illumination that uses the probabilistic nature of visibility evaluations.en_US
dc.description.seriesinformationComputer Graphics Forumen_US
dc.identifier.issn1467-8659en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.12149en_US
dc.publisherThe Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.en_US
dc.subjectI.3.7 [Computer Graphics]en_US
dc.subjectThree Dimensional Graphics and Realismen_US
dc.subjectRaytracingen_US
dc.titleProbabilistic Visibility Evaluation for Direct Illuminationen_US
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