Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines

The most important component of photorealism in Computer Graphics is given by a physically correct approximation of the light transport. Besides the direct illumination from light sources, there is an indirect illumination, produced by the reflections of the light rays on other surfaces of the scene...

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Main Authors: Cristian Lambru, Anca Morar, Florica Moldoveanu, Victor Asavei, Alin Moldoveanu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9527241/
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spelling doaj-023a350c02fb43299a0d60d4777722f32021-09-14T23:00:35ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362021-01-01912515812518310.1109/ACCESS.2021.31096639527241Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game EnginesCristian Lambru0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3168-9969Anca Morar1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4773-6862Florica Moldoveanu2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8357-5840Victor Asavei3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4776-2542Alin Moldoveanu4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1368-7249Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Bucharest, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computers, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Bucharest, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computers, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Bucharest, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computers, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Bucharest, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computers, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Bucharest, RomaniaThe most important component of photorealism in Computer Graphics is given by a physically correct approximation of the light transport. Besides the direct illumination from light sources, there is an indirect illumination, produced by the reflections of the light rays on other surfaces of the scene. In Computer Graphics, the process of computing the illumination of a surface by considering both the direct and the indirect illumination is widely known as global illumination. This paper describes several classes of real-time global illumination techniques used in current game engines together with our own implementations of these approaches. All implementations were made in our own framework, specially designed with a multi-pass rendering architecture that allows fast implementation of rendering techniques and the reuse of functionalities. We analyze these classes based on the following criteria: the visual results produced by the indirect diffuse lighting, the ability to produce glossy reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, translucency and volumetric lighting as well as the ability to simulate area lights. We present the quantitative results of our implementations, obtained with the same external parameters for all techniques, thanks to the unified implementations in the same framework. An important observation is that our analysis is focused on the techniques that are based on the rasterization pipeline, thus, the comparison does not include the techniques designed entirely for the ray-tracing pipeline.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9527241/Computer graphicsreal-time global illuminationreflective shadow maplight propagation volumesvoxel-based representationscreen space
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Cristian Lambru
Anca Morar
Florica Moldoveanu
Victor Asavei
Alin Moldoveanu
spellingShingle Cristian Lambru
Anca Morar
Florica Moldoveanu
Victor Asavei
Alin Moldoveanu
Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
IEEE Access
Computer graphics
real-time global illumination
reflective shadow map
light propagation volumes
voxel-based representation
screen space
author_facet Cristian Lambru
Anca Morar
Florica Moldoveanu
Victor Asavei
Alin Moldoveanu
author_sort Cristian Lambru
title Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
title_short Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
title_full Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
title_fullStr Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
title_full_unstemmed Comparative Analysis of Real-Time Global Illumination Techniques in Current Game Engines
title_sort comparative analysis of real-time global illumination techniques in current game engines
publisher IEEE
series IEEE Access
issn 2169-3536
publishDate 2021-01-01
description The most important component of photorealism in Computer Graphics is given by a physically correct approximation of the light transport. Besides the direct illumination from light sources, there is an indirect illumination, produced by the reflections of the light rays on other surfaces of the scene. In Computer Graphics, the process of computing the illumination of a surface by considering both the direct and the indirect illumination is widely known as global illumination. This paper describes several classes of real-time global illumination techniques used in current game engines together with our own implementations of these approaches. All implementations were made in our own framework, specially designed with a multi-pass rendering architecture that allows fast implementation of rendering techniques and the reuse of functionalities. We analyze these classes based on the following criteria: the visual results produced by the indirect diffuse lighting, the ability to produce glossy reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, translucency and volumetric lighting as well as the ability to simulate area lights. We present the quantitative results of our implementations, obtained with the same external parameters for all techniques, thanks to the unified implementations in the same framework. An important observation is that our analysis is focused on the techniques that are based on the rasterization pipeline, thus, the comparison does not include the techniques designed entirely for the ray-tracing pipeline.
topic Computer graphics
real-time global illumination
reflective shadow map
light propagation volumes
voxel-based representation
screen space
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9527241/
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