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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Tightly-Coupled Multiprocessing for a Global Illumination Algorithm
    (Eurographics Association, 1990) Drettakis, George; Fiume, Eugene; Fournier, Alain
    A prevailing trend in computer graphics is the demand for increasingly realistic global illumination models and algorithms. Despite the fact that the computational power of uniprocessors is increasing, it is clear that much greater computational power is required to achieve satisfactory throughput. The obvious next step is to employ parallel processing. The advent of affordable, tightly-coupled multiprocessors makes such an approach widely available for the first time. We propose a tightly-coupled parallel decomposition of FIAT, a global illumination algorithm, based on space subdivision and power balancing, that we have recently developed. This algorithm is somewhat ambitious, and severely strains existing uniprocessor environments. We discuss techniques for reducing memory contention and maximising parallelism. We also present empirical data on the actual performance of our parallel solution. Since the model of parallel computation that we have employed is likely to persist for quite some time, our techniques are applicable to other algorithms based on space subdivision.
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    Filtering, Clustering and Hierarchy Construction: a New Solution for Ray-Tracing Complex Scenes
    (Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1995) Cazals, Frederic; Drettakis, George; Puech, Claude
    Data structures that handle very complex scenes (hundreds of thousands of objects) have in the past either been laboriously built by hand, or have required the determination of unintuitive parameter values by the user. It is often the case that an incorrect choice of these parameters can result in greedy memory requirements or severely degraded performance. As a remedy to this problem we propose a new data structure which is fully automatic since it does not require the user to determine any input parameters. The structure is built by first filtering the input objects by size, subsequently applying a clustering step to objects of the same size and finally building a hierarchy of uniform grids . We then show that this data structure can be efficiently constructed. The implementation of the shows that the new structure is stable since it s memory requirements grow linearly with the size of the scene, and that it presents a satisfactory compromise between memory usage and computational efficiency. A detailed comparison with previous data structures is also presented in the results.
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    Accurate and Consistent Reconstruction of Illumination Functions Using Structured Sampling
    (Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1993) Drettakis, George; Fiume, Eugene
    The study of common classes of diffuse emitters, such as planar convex polygons, reveals several interesting properties of the functions of illumination these emitters cast on receiver surfaces. Some properties, such as the position of the maximum and the curvature are of particular interest for sampling and reconstruction of illumination across receivers. A computationally efficient approach is presented that identifies these properties, and uses them to select samples of illurnination. In addition these properties are used to determine upper bounds on the error due to linear and quadratic interpolants. These bounds are then used to adaptively subdivide the non-uniform sampling grid, resulting in accurate reconstruction. Results show that the method reduces the error compared to uniform approaches, and produces more consistent animated sequences.
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    Interactive High-Quality Soft Shadows in Scenes with Moving Objects
    (Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1997) Loscos, Celine; Drettakis, George
    Interactive rendering of soft shadows (or penumbra) in scenes with moving objects is a challenging problem. High quality walkthrough rendering of static scenes with penumbra can be achieved using pre-calculated discontinuity meshes, which provide a triangulation well adapted to penumbral boundaries, and backprojections which provide exact illumination computation at vertices very efficiently. However, recomputation of the complete mesh and back-projection structures at each frame is prohibitively expensive in environments with changing geometry. This recomputation would in any case be wasteful: only a limited part of these structures actually needs to be recalculated. We present a novel algorithm which uses spatial coherence of movement as well as the rich visibility information existing in the discontinuity mesh to avoid unnecessary recomputation after object motion. In particular we isolate all modifications required for the update of the discontinuity mesh by using an augmented spatial subdivision structure and we restrict intersections of discontinuity surfaces with the scene. In addition, we develop an algorithm which identifies visibility changes by exploiting information contained in the planar discontinuity mesh of each scene polygon, obviating the need for many expensive searches in 3D space. A full implementation of the algorithm is presented, which allows interactive updates of high-quality soft shadows for scenes of moderate complexity. The algorithm can also be directly applied to global illumination.
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    Efficient Impostor Manipulation for Real-Time Visualization of Urban Scenery
    (Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1997) Sillion, Francois; Drettakis, George; Bodelet, Benoit
    Urban environments present unique challenges to interactive visualization systems, because of the huge complexity of the geometrical data and the widely varying visibility conditions. This paper introduces a new framework for real-time visualisation of such urban scenes. The central concept is that of a dynamic segmentation of the dataset, into a local three-dimensional model and a set of impostors used to represent distant scenery. A segmentation model is presented, based on inherent urban structure. A new impostor structure is introduced, derived from the level-of-detail approach. Impostors combine three-dimensional geometry to correctly model large depth discontinuities and parallax, and textures to rapidly display visual detail. We present the algorithms necessary for the creation of accurate and efficient three-dimensional impostors. The implementation of our algorithms allows interactive navigation in complex urban databases, as required by many applications.