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Abstract:
The paper consists of two main parts:
presentation of an efficient global illumination algorithm and
description of its extensive experimental validation.
In the first part,
a hybrid of cluster-based hierarchical
and progressive radiosity techniques is proposed,
which does not require storing links between interacting
surfaces and clusters.
The clustering does not rely on input geometry,
but is performed on the basis of local position in the scene for
a pre-meshed scene model. The locality of the resulting clusters
improves the accuracy of form factor calculations, and increases
the number of possible high-level energy transfers between
clusters within an imposed error bound. Limited refinement of
the hierarchy of light interactions is supported without
compromising the quality of shading when intermediate images are
produced immediately upon user request.
In the second part, a
multi-stage validation procedure is proposed and results obtained
using the presented algorithm are discussed.
At first, experimental validation of the algorithm against
analytically-derived and measured
real-world data is performed to check how calculation speed is traded
for lighting simulation accuracy for various clustering
and meshing scenarios. Then the algorithm performance and
rendering quality is tested
by a direct comparison of the virtual and real-world images
of a complex environment.
