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Item Line Integration for Rendering Heterogeneous Emissive Volumes(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Simon, Florian; Hanika, Johannes; Zirr, Tobias; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Zwicker, Matthias and Sander, PedroEmissive media are often challenging to render: in thin regions where only few scattering events occur the emission is poorly sampled, while sampling events for emission can be disadvantageous due to absorption in dense regions. We extend the standard path space measurement contribution to also collect emission along path segments, not only at vertices. We apply this extension to two estimators: extending paths via scattering and distance sampling, and next event estimation. In order to do so, we unify the two approaches and derive the corresponding Monte Carlo estimators to interpret next event estimation as a solid angle sampling technique. We avoid connecting paths to vertices hidden behind dense absorbing layers of smoke by also including transmittance sampling into next event estimation. We demonstrate the advantages of our line integration approach which generates estimators with lower variance since entire segments are accounted for. Also, our novel forward next event estimation technique yields faster run times compared to previous next event estimation as it penetrates less deeply into dense volumes.Item Improved Half Vector Space Light Transport(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2015) Hanika, Johannes; Kaplanyan, Anton; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Jaakko Lehtinen and Derek NowrouzezahraiIn this paper, we present improvements to half vector space light transport (HSLT) [KHD14], which make this approach more practical, robust for difficult input geometry, and faster. Our first contribution is the computation of half vector space ray differentials in a different domain than the original work. This enables a more uniform stratification over the image plane during Markov chain exploration. Furthermore, we introduce a new multi chain perturbation in half vector space, which, if combined appropriately with half vector perturbation, makes the mutation strategy both more robust to geometric configurations with fine displacements and faster due to reduced number of ray casts. We provide and analyze the results of improved HSLT and discuss possible applications of our new half vector ray differentials.Item An Interactive Information Visualization Approach to Physically-Based Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Simons, Gerard; Ament, Marco; Herholz, Sebastian; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Eisemann, Martin; Eisemann, Elmar; Matthias Hullin and Marc Stamminger and Tino WeinkaufIn this work, we present a novel information visualization tool to gain insight into the light transport in a physically-based rendering setting. The tool consists of a sampling-based data reduction technique, an extended interactive parallel coordinates plot providing an overview of the attributes linked to each light sample, 2D and 3D heat maps to represent different aspects of the rendering process, as well as a three-dimensional view to display and animate the light path transportation throughout the scene. We show several applications including differential light transport visualization for scene analysis, lighting and material optimization, reduction of rendering artifacts, and user-guided importance sampling.Item Sparse High-degree Polynomials for Wide-angle Lenses(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2016) Schrade, Emanuel; Hanika, Johannes; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Elmar Eisemann and Eugene FiumeRendering with accurate camera models greatly increases realism and improves the match of synthetic imagery to real-life footage. Photographic lenses can be simulated by ray tracing, but the performance depends on the complexity of the lens system, and some operations required for modern algorithms, such as deterministic connections, can be difficult to achieve. We generalise the approach of polynomial optics, i.e. expressing the light field transformation from the sensor to the outer pupil using a polynomial, to work with extreme wide angle (fisheye) lenses and aspherical elements. We also show how sparse polynomials can be constructed from the large space of high-degree terms (we tested up to degree 15). We achieve this using a variant of orthogonal matching pursuit instead of a Taylor series when computing the polynomials. We show two applications: photorealistic rendering using Monte Carlo methods, where we introduce a new aperture sampling technique that is suitable for light tracing, and an interactive preview method suitable for rendering with deep images.Item Memory-Efficient On-The-Fly Voxelization of Particle Data(The Eurographics Association, 2015) Zirr, Tobias; Dachsbacher, Carsten; C. Dachsbacher and P. NavrátilIn this paper we present a novel GPU-friendly real-time voxelization technique for rendering homogeneous media that is defined by particles, e.g. fluids obtained from particle-based simulations such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). Our method computes view-adaptive binary voxelizations with on-the-fly compression of a tiled perspective voxel grid, achieving higher resolutions than previous approaches. It allows for interactive generation of realistic images, enabling advanced rendering techniques such as ray casting-based refraction and reflection, light scattering and absorption, and ambient occlusion. In contrast to previous methods, it does not rely on preprocessing such as expensive, and often coarse, scalar field conversion or mesh generation steps. Our method directly takes unsorted particle data as input. It can be further accelerated by identifying fully populated simulation cells during simulation. The extracted surface can be filtered to achieve smooth surface appearance.Item Improving the Dwivedi Sampling Scheme(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2016) Meng, Johannes; Hanika, Johannes; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Elmar Eisemann and Eugene FiumeDespite recent advances in Monte Carlo rendering techniques, dense, high-albedo participating media such as wax or skin still remain a difficult problem. In such media, random walks tend to become very long, but may still lead to a large contribution to the image. The Dwivedi sampling scheme, which is based on zero variance random walks, biases the sampling probability distributions to exit the medium as quickly as possible. This can reduce variance considerably under the assumption of a locally homogeneous medium with constant phase function. Prior work uses the normal at the Point of Entry as the bias direction. We demonstrate that this technique can fail in common scenarios such as thin geometry with a strong backlight. We propose two new biasing strategies, Closest Point and Incident Illumination biasing, and show that these techniques can speed up convergence by up to an order of magnitude. Additionally, we propose a heuristic approach for combining biased and classical sampling techniques using Multiple Importance Sampling.Item Frontmatter: EG PGV 2015 - Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization(Eurographics Association, 2015) Dachsbacher, Carsten; Navrátil, Paul; -Item Low‐Cost Subpixel Rendering for Diverse Displays(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2014) Engelhardt, Thomas; Schmidt, Thorsten‐Walther; Kautz, Jan; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Holly Rushmeier and Oliver DeussenSubpixel rendering increases the apparent display resolution by taking into account the subpixel structure of a given display. In essence, each subpixel is addressed individually, allowing the underlying signal to be sampled more densely. Unfortunately, naïve subpixel sampling introduces colour aliasing, as each subpixel only displays a specific colour (usually R, G and B subpixels are used). As previous work has shown, chromatic aliasing can be reduced significantly by taking the sensitivity of the human visual system into account. In this work, we find optimal filters for subpixel rendering for a diverse set of 1D and 2D subpixel layout patterns. We demonstrate that these optimal filters can be approximated well with analytical functions. We incorporate our filters into GPU‐based multi‐sample anti‐aliasing to yield subpixel rendering at a very low cost (1–2 ms filtering time at HD resolution). We also show that texture filtering can be adapted to perform efficient subpixel rendering. Finally, we analyse the findings of a user study we performed, which underpins the increased visual fidelity that can be achieved for diverse display layouts, by using our optimal filters.Subpixel rendering increases the apparent display resolution by taking into account the subpixel structure of a given display. In essence, each subpixel is addressed individually, allowing the underlying signal to be sampled more densely. Unfortunately, naïve subpixel sampling introduces colour aliasing, as each subpixel only displays a specific colour (usually R, G, and B subpixels are used). As previous work has shown, chromatic aliasing can be reduced significantly by taking the sensitivity of the human visual system into account. In this work, wefind optimal filters for subpixel rendering for a diverse set of 1D and 2D subpixel layout patterns.Item Level of Detail for Real-Time Volumetric Terrain Rendering(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Scholz, Manuel; Bender, Jan; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Michael Bronstein and Jean Favre and Kai HormannTerrain rendering is an important component of many GIS applications and simulators. Most methods rely on heightmap-based terrain which is simple to acquire and handle, but has limited capabilities for modeling features like caves, steep cliffs, or overhangs. In contrast, volumetric terrain models, e.g. based on isosurfaces can represent arbitrary topology. In this paper, we present a fast, practical and GPU-friendly level of detail algorithm for large scale volumetric terrain that is specifically designed for real-time rendering applications. Our algorithm is based on a longest edge bisection (LEB) scheme. The resulting tetrahedral cells are subdivided into four hexahedra, which form the domain for a subsequent isosurface extraction step. The algorithm can be used with arbitrary volumetric models such as signed distance fields, which can be generated from triangle meshes or discrete volume data sets. In contrast to previous methods our algorithm does not require any stitching between detail levels. It generates crack free surfaces with a good triangle quality. Furthermore, we efficiently extract the geometry at runtime and require no preprocessing, which allows us to render infinite procedural content with low memory consumption.Item Lightcut Interpolation(The Eurographics Association, 2016) Rehfeld, Hauke; Dachsbacher, Carsten; Ulf Assarsson and Warren HuntMany-light rendering methods replace multi-bounce light transport with direct lighting from many virtual point light sources to allow for simple and efficient computation of global illumination. Lightcuts build a hierarchy over virtual lights, so that surface points can be shaded with a sublinear number of lights while minimizing error. However, the original algorithm needs to run on every shading point of the rendered image. It is well known that the performance of Lightcuts can be improved by exploiting the coherence between individual cuts. We propose a novel approach where we invest into the initial lightcut creation at representative cache records, and then directly interpolate the input lightcuts themselves as well as per-cluster visibility for neighboring shading points. This allows us to improve upon the performance of the original Lightcuts algorithm by a factor of 4-8 compared to an optimized GPU-implementation of Lightcuts, while introducing only a small additional approximation error. The GPU-implementation of our technique enables us to create previews of Lightcuts-based global illumination renderings.