Efficient streaming of 3D scenes with complex geometry and complex lighting

Abstract

Streaming data to efficiently render complex 3D scenes in presence of global illumination is still a challenging task. In this paper, we introduce a new data structure based on a 3D grid of irradiance vectors to store the indirect illumination appearing on complex and detailed objects: the Irradiance Vector Grid (IVG). This representation is independent of the geometric complexity and is suitable for quantization to different quantization schemes. Moreover, its streaming over network involves only a small overhead compared to detailed geometry, and can be achieved independently of the geometry. Furthermore, it can be efficiently rendered using modern graphics hardware. We demonstrate our new data structure in a new remote 3D visualization system, that integrates indirect lighting streaming and progressive transmission of the geometry, and * {pacanows | raynaud | granier| reuter | schlick}@labri.fr † poulin@iro.umontreal.ca study the impact of different strategies on data transfer.

Volumetric Vector-Based Representation for Indirect Illumination Caching

“…This caching structure, called Irradiance Vector Grid [12][13] , is only intended for low-frequency indirect illumination, as we assume that direct illumination and highfrequency indirect illumination are dealt with by more specific techniques (e.g., soft shadow maps, specular or glossy environment maps, view-dependent ray casting, etc.). The Irradiance Vector Grid offers the following features: 1) robustness against local variations of diffuse reflectance, 2) robustness against local variations of surface normals, 3) smoothness everywhere in the 3D scene, and 4) low memory requirements.…”