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Fast indirect illumination using Layered Depth Images

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Abstract

We present a novel hybrid rendering method for diffuse and glossy indirect illumination. A scene is rendered using standard rasterization on a GPU. In a shader, secondary ray queries are used to sample incident light and to compute indirect lighting. We observe that it is more important to cast many rays than to have precise results for each ray. Thus, we approximate secondary rays by intersecting them with precomputed layered depth images of the scene. We achieve interactive to real-time frame rates including indirect diffuse and glossy effects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Graphics Group, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Matthias Nießner, Henry Schäfer & Marc Stamminger

Authors
  1. Matthias Nießner
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  2. Henry Schäfer
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  3. Marc Stamminger
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Correspondence to Matthias Nießner.

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Nießner, M., Schäfer, H. & Stamminger, M. Fast indirect illumination using Layered Depth Images. Vis Comput 26, 679–686 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-010-0486-2

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