This advanced tutorial provided the insight
necessary to efficiently and practically
implement global illumination and shading
algorithms based on photon maps. It covered
efficient techniques and data-structures for
generating photon maps, including use of
projection maps and Russian roulette-based sampling. It described how to efficiently
integrate information from photon maps
in shading algorithms to render global illumination effects such as caustics, color bleeding,
and participating media. It presented several examples of scenes rendered using photon maps, discussed how the maps were used, and reviewed issues that were important to ensure good quality and fast results.
Prerequisites
A good working knowledge of global illumination algorithms, in particular Monte Carlo
ray tracing-based methods.
Topics
Efficient and practical techniques for generating and using photon maps. How to use a photon map to compute global illumination effects such as caustics, color bleeding, participating media, and subsurface scattering. Many examples
of photon maps and efficient "tricks" that
significantly improve the performance of the algorithm.
Organizer
Henrik Wann Jensen
Stanford University
Lecturers
Niels J. Christensen
Technical University of Denmark
Henrik Wann Jensen
Stanford University
