Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Hybrid Lighting for faster rendering of scenes with many lights

  • Original Article
  • Published:
The Visual Computer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

There is growing interest in rendering scenes with many lights, where scenes typically contain hundreds to thousands of lights. Each light illuminates geometry within a finite extent called a light volume. A key aspect of performance is determining which lights apply to what geometry, and then applying those lights efficiently. We present a GPU-based approach using spatial data structures, binning lights by depth analytically while also taking advantage of hardware rasterization. This improves light binning performance by 3–6\(\times \). We also present a GPU memory and cache friendly data structure that takes two passes to build, giving 4–10\(\times \) improved performance when applying lighting and an overall improvement of 1.3–4\(\times \) for total frametime.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

References

  1. Bezrati, A.: Real-time lighting via light linked list. In: GPU Pro 6: Advanced Rendering Techniques p. 183 (2015)

  2. Crassin, C., Neyret, F., Sainz, M., Green, S., Eisemann, E.: Interactive indirect illumination using voxel cone tracing. In: Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 30, pp. 1921–1930. Wiley Online Library (2011)

  3. Deering, M., Winner, S., Schediwy, B., Duffy, C., Hunt, N.: The triangle processor and normal vector shader: a vlsi system for high performance graphics. In: ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, vol. 22, ACM, pp. 21–30 (1988)

  4. Harada, T.: A 2.5 d culling for forward+. In: SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 Technical Briefs, ACM, p. 18 (2012)

  5. Harada, T., McKee, J., Yang, J.C.: Forward+: Bringing deferred lighting to the next level. In: Andujar, C., Puppo, E. (eds.) Eurographics 2012 - Short Papers. The Eurographics Association (2012). https://doi.org/10.2312/conf/EG2012/short/005-008

  6. Kämpe, V., Sintorn, E., Assarsson, U.: High resolution sparse voxel dags. ACM Trans. Gr. (TOG) 32(4), 101 (2013)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Knowles, P., Leach, G., Zambetta, F.: Efficient layered fragment buffer techniques. In: Cozzi, P., Riccio, C. (eds.) OpenGL Insights, pp. 279–292. CRC Press, UK (2012). http://www.openglinsights.com/

  8. Maule, M., Comba, J.L., Torchelsen, R., Bastos, R.: Memory-efficient order-independent transparency with dynamic fragment buffer. In: 2012 25th SIBGRAPI Conference on Graphics, Patterns and Images, IEEE, pp. 134–141 (2012)

  9. McGuire, M.: Computer graphics archive (2017). https://casual-effects.com/data

  10. O’Donnell, Y., Chajdas, M.G.: Tiled light trees. In: Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, ACM, p. 1 (2017)

  11. Olsson, O., Assarsson, U.: Tiled shading. J. Gr. GPU Game Tools 15(4), 235–251 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Olsson, O., Billeter, M., Assarsson, U.: Clustered deferred and forward shading. In: Proceedings of the Fourth ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Conference on High-Performance Graphics, Eurographics Association, pp. 87–96 (2012)

  13. Olsson, O., Billeter, M., Assarsson, U.: Tiled and clustered forward shading: supporting transparency and MSAA. In: ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Talks, SIGGRAPH ’12, pp. 37:1–37:1. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2012). https://doi.org/10.1145/2343045.2343095

  14. Ortegren, K., Persson, E.: Clustered shading: assigning lights using conservative rasterization in directx 12. In: GPU Pro 7: Advanced Rendering Techniques p. 43 (2016)

  15. Persson, E., Olsson, O.: Practical clustered deferred and forward shading. Courses: Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games. SIGGRAPH 13(23), 1–23 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Saito, T., Takahashi, T.: Comprehensible rendering of 3-d shapes. In: ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, vol. 24, ACM, pp. 197–206 (1990)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Jesse Archer, Geoff Leach, Pyarelal Knowles & Ron van Schyndel

Authors
  1. Jesse Archer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Geoff Leach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Pyarelal Knowles
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Ron van Schyndel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jesse Archer.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Archer, J., Leach, G., Knowles, P. et al. Hybrid Lighting for faster rendering of scenes with many lights. Vis Comput 34, 853–862 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-018-1535-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-018-1535-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation