Fast Occlusion Sweeping

While realistic illumination significantly improves the visual quality and perception of rendered images, it is often very expensive to compute. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for embedding a global ambient occlusion computation within the fast sweeping algorithm while determining isosurfaces. With this method we can approximate ambient occlusion for rendering volumetric data with minimal additional cost over fast sweeping. We compare visualizations rendered with our algorithm to visualizations computed with only local shading, and with a ambient occlusion calculation using Monte Carlo sampling method. We also show how this method can be used for approximating low frequency shadows and subsurface scattering. Realistic illumination techniques used in digitally synthesized images are known to greatly enhance the perception of shape. This is as true for renderings of volume data as it is for geometric models. For example, Qiu et al. [1] used full global illumination techniques...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ISVC
• Authors: Mayank Singh, Cem Yuksel, Donald H. House
• Keywords: Ambient Occlusion, Applied Computing, Global Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination, ISVC 2009