Priority-driven Ray Tracing

A typical ray tracing algorithm traces a ray through each screen-pixel and spawns secondary rays at ray–object intersection points. Unlike traditional ray tracers which follow these rays recursively, we assign a priority value to each newly spawned ray and insert it into a priority queue. The priority assigned to each ray can be based on a variety of criteria, some of which we explore here. The next ray we trace is always the one with the highest priority in the queue. Occasionally, we trigger display updates when a checkpoint or predefined threshold is reached, providing intermediate images for review and evaluation. Classical ray tracers, once given the rendering specifications, are not controllable by the user. The priority-driven ray tracing, on the other hand, provides the user with a mechanism to steer the rendering and deliver intermediate images amid processing. This paper describes the illumination model of the non-recursive priority-driven ray tracer and evaluates its memory and time requirements. We show that although worst-case memory requirements can be overwhelming, in practice, our method is both useful and feasible. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Direct Ray Tracing of Phong Tessellation

There are two major ways of calculating ray and parametric surface intersections in rendering. The first is through the use of tessellated triangles, and the second is to use parametric surfaces together with numerical methods such as Newton's method. Both methods are computationally expensive and complicated to implement. In this paper, we focus on Phong Tessellation and introduce a simple direct ray tracing method for Phong Tessellation. Our method enables rendering smooth surfaces in a computationally inexpensive yet robust way.     

Interactive Simulation of the Human Eye Depth of Field and Its Correction by Spectacle Lenses

This paper describes a fast rendering algorithm for verification of spectacle lens design. Our method simulates refraction corrections of astigmatism as well as myopia or presbyopia. Refraction and defocus are the main issues in the simulation. For refraction, our proposed method uses per-vertex basis ray tracing which warps the environment map and produces a real-time refracted image which is subjectively as good as ray tracing. Conventional defocus simulation was previously done by distribution ray tracing and a real-time solution was impossible. We introduce the concept of a blur field, which we use to displace every vertex according to its position. The blurring information is precomputed as a set of field values distributed to voxels which are formed by evenly subdividing the perspective projected space. The field values can be determined by tracing a wavefront from each voxel through the lens and the eye, and by evaluating the spread of light at the retina considering the best human accommodation effort. The blur field is stored as texture data and referred to by the vertex shader that displaces each vertex. With an interactive frame rate, blending the multiple rendering results produces a blurred image comparable to distribution ray tracing output.     

Efficient CPU‐based Volume Ray Tracing Techniques

Recent research on high‐performance ray tracing has achieved real‐time performance even for highly complex surface models already on a single PC. In this report, we provide an overview of techniques for extending real‐time ray tracing also to interactive volume rendering. We review fast rendering techniques for different volume representations and rendering modes in a variety of computing environments. The physically‐based rendering approach of ray tracing enables high image quality and allows for easily mixing surface, volume and other primitives in a scene, while fully accounting for all of their optical interactions. We present optimized implementations and discuss the use of upcoming high‐performance processors for volume ray tracing.     

A Terrain Rendering Method Using Vertical Ray Coherence

Ray casting may be applied to the terrain rendering from DTMs (digital terrain models). In this paper we propose a ray casting method which exploits exact vertical ray coherence. This method not only achieves a good performance, but also allows any set of viewing parameters. To analyse the vertical ray coherence property, we define the following terms: a ray plane which is perpendicular to the sea-level plane and passes through the COP (centre of projection), and the corresponding ray line which is the line of intersection of the ray plane and the projection plane. Vertical ray coherence can be stated as: if two rays pass through the same ray line, they pass over the identical set of points on the DTM base plane. After a ray is cast on the DTM, we can get a good starting point to cast another ray using this property. Our method tries to cover the projection plane with ray lines. Since ray lines are not parallel to each other, it is a difficult task to cover the entire plane. In fact all ray lines intersect at a point (COP′). We first generate a set of ray lines sufficient to cover the projection plane near COP′. As pixels get further from COP′, more ray lines are generated to fill most of the gaps between pixels covered by the previous set of ray lines. Rays passing through the same ray line are effectively cast using vertical ray coherence. To fill remaining pixels not covered by ray lines, pixel values of vertical/horizontal neighbours are interpolated. To cast rays efficiently, successive points generated by a line algorithm are followed along the projection of the rays on the DTM base plane. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The lazy sweep ray casting algorithm for rendering irregular grids

Lazy sweep ray casting is a fast algorithm for rendering general irregular grids. It is based on the sweep-plane paradigm, and it is able to accelerate ray casting for rendering irregular grids, including disconnected and nonconvex unstructured irregular grids (even with holes) with a rendering cost that decreases as the “disconnectedness” decreases. The algorithm is carefully tailored to exploit spatial coherence even if the image resolution differs substantially from the object space resolution. Lazy sweep ray casting has several desirable properties, including its generality, (depth-sorting) accuracy, low memory consumption, speed, simplicity of implementation and portability (e.g. no hardware dependencies). We establish the practicality of our method through experimental results based on our implementation, which is shown to be substantially faster (by up to two orders of magnitude) than other algorithms implemented in software. We also provide theoretical results, both lower and upper bounds, on the complexity of ray casting of irregular grids     

一种基于GPU的改进光线投射算法

针对传统光线投射算法计算量大、速度慢、在没有硬件加速情况下难以实时重建的问题,提出了一种基于GPU编程的快速计算重采样点值的光线投射算法。首先,设计一个GPU程序确定投射光线的终点与方向;其次,采用加速度步长采样方法确定重采样点的位置并利用快速复合插值方法计算重采样点的颜色值;最后,采用不透明度提前截止法进一步加速重建过程。实验结果表明,该方法计算复杂度低、执行效率高。在保证重建图像质量的同时,与现有基于CPU的光线投射算法相比,重建速度提高6倍,与基于GPU的传统光线投射算法相比,速度提高2倍。     

三维地震数据场的并行体绘制算法

光线投射算法是一种应用广泛的体绘制基本算法,其存在的主要问题是绘制速度较慢.为了提高光线投射算法的绘制速度,利用光线间和光线内的并行性,结合三维地震数据场的特点和文件存储特性,提出了一种基于工作站机群的三维地震数据场的并行体绘制算法.地震油气解释实际应用表明本算法能满足地震解释的要求.     

Crack‐free rendering of dynamically tesselated B‐rep models

We propose a versatile pipeline to render B‐Rep models interactively, precisely and without rendering‐related artifacts such as cracks. Our rendering method is based on dynamic surface evaluation using both tesselation and ray‐casting, and direct GPU surface trimming. An initial rendering of the scene is performed using dynamic tesselation. The algorithm we propose reliably detects then fills up cracks in the rendered image. Crack detection works in image space, using depth information, while crack‐filling is either achieved in image space using a simple classification process, or performed in object space through selective ray‐casting. The crack filling method can be dynamically changed at runtime. Our image space crack filling approach has a limited runtime cost and enables high quality, real‐time navigation. Our higher quality, object space approach results in a rendering of similar quality than full‐scene ray‐casting, but is 2 to 6 times faster, can be used during navigation and provides accurate, reliable rendering. Integration of our work with existing tesselation‐based rendering engines is straightforward.     

Noiseless GPU rendering of isotropic BRDF surfaces

Illumination at a surface point is formulated as an integral of a BRDF using the incident radiance over the hemisphere domain. A popular method to compute the integral is Monte Carlo integration, in which the surface illumination is computed as the sum of the integrand evaluated with stochastically sampled rays. Although its simple nature is practically attractive, it incurs the serious drawback of noise artifacts due to estimator variance. In this paper, we propose a novel noiseless Monte Carlo rendering algorithm running in real time on a GPU. The main contribution is a novel importance sampling scheme, which constructs spatially continuous sample rays over a surface. For each evenly spaced polar angle of the eye ray, denoted by θ, incident rays are sampled with a PDF (probability density function) derived from a target BRDF lobe. We develop a force-based update method to create a sequence of consistent ray sets along θ’s. Finally, corresponding rays in the sequence of ray sets are linearly connected to form a continuous ray curve, referred to as a sample thread. When rendering, illumination at a surface point is computed with rays, each of which is given as a point on a sample thread. Because a thread provides a sample ray that continuously varies on a surface, the random variance of the illumination, causing visual noise during the Monte Carlo rendering process, is eliminated. A thread set is precomputed for each BRDF to free the GPU from the burden of sampling during real-time rendering. According to extensive experiments, approximately 100 threads are sufficient for most measured BRDFs with acceptable rendering quality for interactive applications.     

Deriving spectra from colors and rendering light interference

A new method for transforming colors into spectra, which we applied to rendering light interference using a standard ray tracer, significantly enhances color-based rendering software and graphics platforms     

Template-based rendering of run-length- encoded volumes

Template-based volume rendering is a technique to accelerate volume ray casting. It does not trade off image quality for rendering speed. However, it still falls short of interactive manipulation of volume data, mainly owing to the ray-by-ray volume access pattern and the long ray path in the transparent regions. In this paper we present an object-order template-based volume rendering method that uses run-length encoding to enable skipping highly transparent regions. We present three algorithms, one for each principal axis direction. By combining the advantages of object-order volume traversal and run-length encoded volumes, the algorithms achieve high quality rendering in a much shorter time than the original template-based volume rendering. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PERIS: A programming environment for realistic image synthesis

A computer graphics system called PERIS is described. It offers two levels of user interfaces to serve both as a testbed to facilitate further research work and as a pragmatic system for CAD/CAM applications. Flexibility of the system is achieved by providing tools of solid modeling, surface modeling and procedural model representations for physical environment modeling and by including interfaces of immediate display, scan line rendering, ray tracing and two-way ray tracing for realistic image synthesis. A linear octree data structure is established to support the modeling and rendering processes, greatly reducing the computations involved. Meanwhile, we also introduce a new illumination model which unifies most of the existing models on a theoretical basis. An improved Cook-Torrance model is then derived. By examining the merits and limitations of the classic ray tracing methods, we propose a new rendering technique of two-way ray tracing that allows more accurate simulation of light propagation in the environment.     

基于八叉树邻域分析光线跟踪的云三维模拟

针对目前三维云模拟绘制效率低、计算资源消耗大、绘制效果差等问题,提出基于八叉树邻域分析的光线跟踪算法,并用于WRF模式云数据的三维模拟。使用八叉树结构优化传统光线跟踪算法的数据存储结构,通过存储节点编码和划分层次改进邻域分析算法,通过简化光线的折射公式优化Whitted光照模型,借助OpenGL和Vapor工具实现云数据的三维可视化。实验结果表明,该方法降低了绘制时间,提高了渲染效率,更好体现了云的真实物理特征。     

Rendering realistic spectral bokeh due to lens stops and aberrations

Creating bokeh effect in synthesized images can improve photorealism and emphasize interesting subjects. Therefore, we present a novel method for rendering realistic bokeh effects, especially chromatic effects, which are absent for existing methods. This new method refers to two key techniques: an accurate dispersive lens model and an efficient spectral rendering scheme. This lens model is implemented based on optical data of real lenses and considers wavelength dependency of physical lenses by introducing a sequential dispersive ray tracing algorithm inside this model. This spectral rendering scheme is proposed to support rendering of lens dispersion and integration between this new model and bidirectional ray tracing. The rendering experiments demonstrate that our method is able to simulate realistic spectral bokeh effects caused by lens stops and aberrations, especially chromatic aberration, and feature high rendering efficiency.     

一种高效的光线投射体绘制算法

作为体绘制中的一个经典绘制算法,光线投射算法理论简单同时能产生高质量的图像,被广泛应用于医学图像可视化领域。但在绘制过程中有大量的投射光线和体素的重采样,导致绘制速度较为缓慢。为提高绘制的速度,文中提出一种高效的光线投射体绘制算法,通过引入碰撞检测技术减少投射光线的数目,避免冗余光线的采样计算,同时采用光线跳跃方法在碰撞检测包围盒内跳过对空体素的重采样,加快了光线合成的过程。实验结果表明,改进后的算法不仅能保证所需要的图像质量,还能大幅度地减少采样计算的时间,高效地提高绘制速度。     

Adaptive Interleaved Sampling for Interactive High‐Fidelity Rendering

Recent advances have made interactive ray tracing (IRT) possible on consumer desktop machines. These advances have brought about the potential for interactive global illumination (IGI) with enhanced realism through physically based lighting. IGI, unlike IRT, has a much higher computational complexity. Furthermore, since non‐primary rays constitute the majority of the computation, the rays are predominantly incoherent, making impractical many of the methods that have made IRT possible. Two methods that have already shown promise in decreasing the computational time of the GI solution are interleaved sampling and adaptive rendering. Interleaved sampling is a generalized sampling scheme that smoothly blends between regular and irregular sampling while maintaining coherence. Adaptive rendering algorithms adjust rendering quality, non‐uniformally, using a guidance scheme. While adaptive rendering has shown to provide speed‐up when used for off‐line rendering it has not been utilized in IRT due to its naturally incoherent nature. In this paper, we combine adaptive rendering and interleaved sampling within a component‐based solution into a new approach we term adaptive interleaved sampling. This allows us to tailor new adaptive heuristics for interleaved sampling of the individual components of the GI solution significantly improving overall performance. We present a novel component‐based IGI framework for which we achieve interactive frame rates for a range of effects such as indirect diffuse lighting, soft shadows and single scatter homogeneous participating media.     

Hardware‐Assisted Projected Tetrahedra

We present a flexible and highly efficient hardware‐assisted volume renderer grounded on the original Projected Tetrahedra (PT) algorithm. Unlike recent similar approaches, our method is exclusively based on the rasterization of simple geometric primitives and takes full advantage of graphics hardware. Both vertex and geometry shaders are used to compute the tetrahedral projection, while the volume ray integral is evaluated in a fragment shader; hence, volume rendering is performed entirely on the GPU within a single pass through the pipeline. We apply a CUDA‐based visibility ordering achieving rendering and sorting performance of over 6 M Tet/s for unstructured datasets. Furthermore, as each tetrahedron is processed independently, we employ a data‐parallel solution which is neither bound by GPU memory size nor does it rely on auxiliary volume information. In addition, iso‐surfaces can be readily extracted during the rendering process, and time‐varying data are handled without extra burden.     

Geometry Textures and Applications†

Geometry textures are a novel geometric representation for surfaces based on height maps. The visualization is done through a graphics processing unit (GPU) ray casting algorithm applied to the whole object. At rendering time, the fine‐scale details (mesostructures) are reconstructed preserving original quality. Visualizing surfaces with geometry textures allows a natural level‐of‐detail (LOD) behaviour. There are numerous applications that can benefit from the use of geometry textures. In this paper, besides a mesostructure visualization survey, we present geometry textures with three possible applications: rendering of solid models, geological surfaces visualization and surface smoothing.