Title :
Raytracing prefiltered occlusion for aggregate geometry
Author :
Lacewell, Dylan ; Burley, Brent ; Boulos, Solomon ; Shirley, Peter
Author_Institution :
Walt Disney Animation Studios, Burbank, CA
Abstract :
We prefilter occlusion of aggregate geometry, e.g., foliage or hair, storing local occlusion as a directional opacity in each node of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH). During intersection, we terminate rays early at BVH nodes based on ray differential, and composite the stored opacities. This makes intersection cost independent of geometric complexity for rays with large differentials, and simultaneously reduces the variance of occlusion estimates. These two algorithmic improvements result in significant performance gains for soft shadows and ambient occlusion. The prefiltered opacity data depends only on geometry, not lights, and can be computed in linear time based on assumptions about the statistics of aggregate geometry.
Keywords :
computational geometry; computer graphics; opacity; ray tracing; statistical analysis; aggregate geometry; bounding volume hierarchy; raytracing prefiltered occlusion; statistical analysis; Aggregates; Computational geometry; Costs; Hair; Layout; Noise figure; Noise level; Noise reduction; Production; Statistics;
Conference_Titel :
Interactive Ray Tracing, 2008. RT 2008. IEEE Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Los Angeles, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2741-3
DOI :
10.1109/RT.2008.4634616