Methods for transform, analysis and rendering of complete light representations

Abstract

Recent advances in digital holography, optical engineering and computer graphics have opened up the possibility of full parallax, three dimensional displays. The premises of these rendering systems are however somewhat different from traditional imaging and video systems. Instead of rendering an image of the scene, the complete light distribution must be computed. In this thesis we discuss some different methods regarding processing and rendering of two well known full light representations: the light field and the hologram. A light field transform approach, based on matrix optics operators, is introduced. Thereafter we discuss the relationship between the light field and the hologram representations. The final part of the thesis is concerned with hologram and wave field synthesis. We present two different methods. First, a GPU accelerated approach to rendering point-based models is introduced. Thereafter, we develop a Fourier rendering approach capable of generating angular spectra of triangular mesh models.