Premium
Adaptive mesh generation for progressive radiosity: A ray‐tracing based algorithm.
Author(s) -
PAULIN Mathias,
JESSEL JeanPierre
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
computer graphics forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1467-8659
pISSN - 0167-7055
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8659.1330421
Subject(s) - radiosity (computer graphics) , global illumination , ray tracing (physics) , computer science , rendering (computer graphics) , computation , mesh generation , adaptive mesh refinement , path tracing , algorithm , computer graphics , computer graphics (images) , computer vision , computational science , finite element method , optics , physics , thermodynamics
The radiosity method is one of the most popular rendering algorithms. It allows to simulate interreflections of light accurately between surfaces as energy transfers are well designed. However, this algorithm and its derivatives need to break scenes into a relatively large number of small elements to approximate the illumination function. Even with a very large number of elements, not all the illumination effects can be simulated. In fact, there are always artefacts when modelling sharp shadows, besides shadows falling between mesh vertices can be missed entirely. To reduce the computational cost of such methods and to increase the accuracy of the radiosity solution, adaptive mesh generation is well suited. In this paper, we present a ray‐tracing based algorithm for adaptive mesh generation which resolves all the illumination problems without lengthening computation time too much. This method allows a small number of initial elements and increases element density in critical locations while solving the illumination problem.