一种基于阴影图的实时伪软阴影生成方法

由于硬阴影不能反映真实场景,软阴影成为了阴影实现的主流。但是软阴影需要对区域光源进行密度采样,为了省掉密度采样的开销,而且又不影响真实感,实现了一种伪软阴影。首先基于阴影图提出了一种用添加的平滑面构造半影纹理的新方法,并叙述了如何用该半影纹理构造伪软阴影。实验证明该方法能正确并实时地实现阴影渲染。     

Packet-based Hierarchal Soft Shadow Mapping

Recent soft shadow mapping techniques based on back-projection can render high quality soft shadows in real time. However, real time high quality rendering of large penumbrae is still challenging, especially when multilayer shadow maps are used to reduce single light sample silhouette artifact. In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm to attack this problem. We first present a GPU-friendly packet-based approach rendering a packet of neighboring pixels together to amortize the cost of computing visibility factors. Then, we propose a hierarchical technique to quickly locate the contour edges, further reducing the computation cost. At last, we suggest a multi-view shadow map approach to reduce the single light sample artifact. We also demonstrate its higher image quality and higher efficiency compared to the existing depth peeling approaches.     

Rendering Soft Shadows using Multilayered Shadow Fins

Generating soft shadows in real time is difficult. Exact methods (such as ray tracing, and multiple light source simulation) are too slow, while approximate methods often overestimate the umbra regions. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm based on the shadow map method to quickly and highly accurately render soft shadows produced by a light source. Our method builds inner and outer translucent fins on objects to represent the penumbra area inside and outside hard shadows, respectively. The fins are traced into multilayered light space maps to store illuminance adjustment to shadows. The viewing space illuminance buffer is then calculated using those maps. Finally, by blending illuminance and shading, a scene with highly accurate soft shadow effects is produced. Our method does not suffer from umbra overestimation. Physical relations between light, objects and shadows demonstrate the soundness of our approach.     

Stochastic Soft Shadow Mapping

In this paper, we extend the concept of pre‐filtered shadow mapping to stochastic rasterization, enabling real‐time rendering of soft shadows from planar area lights. Most existing soft shadow mapping methods lose important visibility information by relying on pinhole renderings from an area light source, providing plausible results only for small light sources. Since we sample the entire 4D shadow light field stochastically, we are able to closely approximate shadows of large area lights as well. In order to efficiently reconstruct smooth shadows from this sparse data, we exploit the analogy of soft shadow computation to rendering defocus blur, and introduce a multiplane pre‐filtering algorithm. We demonstrate how existing pre‐filterable approximations of the visibility function, such as variance shadow mapping, can be extended to four dimensions within our framework.     

融合阴影图和深度划分阴影体的阴影渲染算法

阴影图算法可以简单、快速地渲染硬阴影,但该算法渲染的硬阴影会在边缘区域出现锯齿状走样。受此影响,基于阴影图算法渲染的柔和阴影,在小尺寸半影区域依然可能会出现锯齿状走样。因此,要渲染无走样的柔和阴影,需要精确计算阴影边缘区域的着色点对点光源的可见性。深度划分阴影体算法可以精确地计算着色点对点光源的可见性,但其不仅在效率上不及阴影图算法,还无法实现柔和阴影渲染。针对上述问题,提出一种融合阴影图和深度划分阴影体的阴影渲染算法,对处于阴影边缘区域的着色点,使用深度划分阴影体算法精确计算该着色点对点光源的可见性;对其他着色点,使用阴影图算法快速计算该着色点对点光源的可见性。最后,将着色点的可见性值存储在可见性图中并滤波即可实现无走样柔和阴影的渲染。     

A quadratic spline approximation using detail multi-layer for soft shadow generation in augmented reality

Implementation of shadows is crucial to enhancement of images in AR environments. Without shadows, virtual objects would look floating over the scene resulting in unrealistic rendering of AR environments. Casting hard shadows would provide only spatial information while soft shadows help improve realism of AR environments. Several algorithms have been proposed to render realistic shadows which often incurred high computational costs. Little attention has been directed towards the balanced trade-off between shadow quality and computational costs. In this study, two approaches are proposed: Quadratic Spline Interpolation (QSI) to soften the outline of the shadow and Detail Multi-Layer (DML) technique to optimize the volume of computations for the generation of soft shadows based on real light sources. QSI estimates boarder hard shadow samples while DML involves three main phases: real light sources estimation, soft shadow production and reduction of the complexity of 3-Dimensional objects’ shadows. To be more precise, a reflective hemisphere is used to capture real light and to create an environment map. The Median Cut algorithm is implemented to locate the direction of real light sources on the environment map. Subsequently, the original hard shadows are retrieved and a sample of multilayer hard shadows is produced where each layer has its unique size and colour. These layers overlap to produce soft shadows based on the real light sources’ directions. Finally, the Level of Details (LOD) algorithm is implemented to increase the efficiency of soft shadows by decreasing the complexity of vertex transformations. The proposed technique is tested using three samples of multilayer hard shadows with varying numbers of light sources generated from the Median Cut algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed technique successfully produces realistic soft shadows at low computational costs.     

Predicted Virtual Soft Shadow Maps with High Quality Filtering

In this paper we present a novel image based algorithm to render visually plausible anti‐aliased soft shadows in a robust and efficient manner. To achieve both high visual quality and high performance, it employs an accurate shadow map filtering method which guarantees smooth penumbrae and high quality anisotropic anti‐aliasing of the sharp transitions. Unlike approaches based on pre‐filtering approximations, our approach does not suffer from light bleeding or losing contact shadows. Discretization artefacts are avoided by creating virtual shadow maps on the fly according to a novel shadow map resolution prediction model. This model takes into account the screen space frequency of the penumbrae via a perceptual metric which has been directly established from an appropriate user study. Consequently, our algorithm always generates shadow maps with minimal resolutions enabling high performance while guarantying high quality. Thanks to this perceptual model, our algorithm can sometimes be faster at rendering soft shadows than hard shadows. It can render game‐like scenes at very high frame rates, and extremely large and complex scenes such as CAD models at interactive rates. In addition, our algorithm is highly scalable, and the quality versus performance trade‐off can be easily tweaked.     

深度剥离与GPU结合的近似软影算法

针对基于阴影图算法扩展的一些近似软影算法中存在的只考虑外半影区而导致的本影区过多估计的问题,提出了一种深度剥离与GPU结合的近似软影实时绘制算法。算法利用GPU的几何着色器来提取场景物体的轮廓边并生成内半影和外半影图元,进而得到整个内外半影颜色图和深度图,最终阴影绘制的时候通过参考阴影图和内外半影图来确定每个可见像素的明暗值,从而得到比以往算法较真实的绘制效果,算法完全在GPU中实现。实验结果表明,对相对不复杂的场景,该算法可以生成较真实的软影效果,且绘制帧率完全达到实时。     

Rainbow Flash Camera: Depth Edge Extraction Using Complementary Colors

We present a novel color multiplexing method for extracting depth edges in a scene. It has been shown that casting shadows from different light positions provides a simple yet robust cue for extracting depth edges. Instead of flashing a single light source at a time as in conventional methods, our method flashes all light sources simultaneously to reduce the number of captured images. We use a ring light source around a camera and arrange colors on the ring such that the colors form a hue circle. Since complementary colors are arranged at any position and its antipole on the ring, shadow regions where a half of the hue circle is occluded are colorized according to the orientations of depth edges, while non-shadow regions where all the hues are mixed have a neutral color in the captured image. Thus the colored shadows in the single image directly provide depth edges and their orientations in an ideal situation. We present an algorithm that extracts depth edges from a single image by analyzing the colored shadows. We also present a more robust depth edge extraction algorithm using an additional image captured by rotating the hue circle with \(180^\circ \) to compensate for scene textures and ambient lights. We compare our approach with conventional methods for various scenes using a camera prototype consisting of a standard camera and 8 color LEDs. We also demonstrate a bin-picking system using the camera prototype mounted on a robot arm.     

Shadows and soft shadows with participating media using splatting

This paper describes an efficient algorithm to model the light attenuation due to a participating media with low albedo. Here, we consider the light attenuation along a ray, as well as the light attenuation emanating from a surface. The light attenuation is modeled using a splatting volume renderer for both the viewer and the light source. During the rendering, a 2D shadow buffer accumulates the light attenuation. We first summarize the basic shadow algorithm using splatting. Then, an extension of the basic shadow algorithm for projective textured light sources is described. The main part of this paper is an analytic soft shadow algorithm based on convolution techniques. We describe and discuss the soft shadow algorithm, and generate soft shadows, including umbra and penumbra, for extended light sources.     

Soft Shadow Maps: Efficient Sampling of Light Source Visibility

Shadows, particularly soft shadows, play an important role in the visual perception of a scene by providing visual cues about the shape and position of objects. Several recent algorithms produce soft shadows at interactive rates, but they do not scale well with the number of polygons in the scene or only compute the outer penumbra. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for computing interactive soft shadows on the GPU. Our new approach provides both inner‐ and outer‐penumbra for a modest computational cost, providing interactive frame‐rates for models with hundreds of thousands of polygons. Our technique is based on a sampled image of the occluders, as in shadow map techniques. These shadow samples are used in a novel manner, computing their effect on a second projective shadow texture using fragment programs. In essence, the fraction of the light source area hidden by each sample is accumulated at each texel position of this Soft Shadow Map. We include an extensive study of the approximations caused by our algorithm, as well as its computational costs.     

Exponential Soft Shadow Mapping

In this paper we present an image‐based algorithm to render visually plausible anti‐aliased soft shadows in real time. Our technique employs a new shadow pre‐filtering method based on an extended exponential shadow mapping theory. The algorithm achieves faithful contact shadows by adopting an optimal approximation to exponential shadow reconstruction function. Benefiting from a novel overflow free summed area table tile grid data structure, numerical stability is guaranteed and error filtering response is avoided. By integrating an adaptive anisotropic filtering method, the proposed algorithm can produce high quality smooth shadows both in large penumbra areas and in high frequency sharp transitions, meanwhile guarantee cheap memory consumption and high performance.     

结合区域配对的室外阴影检测

目的 针对现有大多数阴影检测算法在检测细长阴影、自阴影、区分阴影与暗色像素等方面的不足,提出一种新的结合区域配对的阴影检测算法.方法 首先通过均值漂移算法和canny检测算法,分割图像得到每个独立的区域;然后从每个区域中提取纹理和亮度建立单个区域的阴影模型,再从区域对中提取纹理直方图的距离、颜色比(分别在RGB和Lab空间下)以及HSI空间下H和I两通道的比值等特征建立区域对的阴影模型;最后根据上述两个模型运用图割理论检测阴影.结果 实验结果表明,本文算法在阴影检测上的准确率高达85.2%,远高于其他算法,检测速度也比其他算法快34%左右.该算法不仅能有效地检测细长阴影和自阴影,还能较好地区分阴影与暗色像素.结论 提出了一种新的阴影检测算法,通过区域配对的方法实时处理单幅室外图像.实验结果表明,该算法在检测细长阴影、自阴影以及区分阴影与暗色像素等方面有良好的效果.     

单幅图像下不同阴影强度的阴影去除

阴影是由于场景的照明不一致而出现在图像中的自然现象。当物体的透光度不同或由不同光源照射会在图像中产生不同强度的阴影。因此,对具有不同阴影强度的图像阴影去除进行了研究。通过用户交互得到阴影掩模,接下来检测具有围绕阴影边界的可变间隔和长度的样本强度分布,这避免了不均匀边界引起的伪影。然后结合超像素分割算法和FCM_S聚类算法对阴影部分进行区域合并,用于阴影和图像边界处尺度的估计。为了恢复阴影部分光照,采用图像修复算法传播阴影尺度场。最后,得到阴影去除后的图像,并进行色彩校正。为了证明该算法的优越性能,与其他算法进行定量比较,结果有所提升。     

Light mesh: soft shadows as interpolation of visibility

The light meshes (LM) method is a modification of the recursive ray tracing algorithm (RRTA). In this paper we consider an original procedure of shadow calculations, which allows soft shadows to be obtained. The light meshes method can be integrated easily into existing implementations of RRTA as a supplementary technique or plug-ins. In comparison with conventional RRTA the suggested technique allows us to: (a) build soft shadows, (b) speed up a process of shadow calculations, (c) simulate main effects of diffuse interreflections, (d) omit the ambient term. Obviously, visual results of the LM method differ slightly from those calculated with the help of the basic RRTA.

A light mesh is a point set in the 3D space of a scene. In practice, it is approximated by a finite set of points, as a rule, by evenly spaced grids. At each mesh point we compute illuminance, which characterizes some kind of “light field intensity” in the scene space. Then an important part of resulting illumination of a scene object point is obtained by the interpolation of the stored values of nearby mesh points.

Experiments show that the approach proposed reduces computational time with respect to the ray tracing algorithm if a scene contains a lot of light sources and/or an image has a large resolution.     

Automated masking of cloud and cloud shadow for forest change analysis using Landsat images

Accurate masking of cloud and cloud shadow is a prerequisite for reliable mapping of land surface attributes. Cloud contamination is particularly a problem for land cover change analysis, because unflagged clouds may be mapped as false changes, and the level of such false changes can be comparable to or many times more than that of actual changes, even for images with small percentages of cloud cover. Here we develop an algorithm for automatically flagging clouds and their shadows in Landsat images. This algorithm uses clear view forest pixels as a reference to define cloud boundaries for separating cloud from clear view surfaces in a spectral-temperature space. Shadow locations are predicted according to cloud height estimates and sun illumination geometry, and actual shadow pixels are identified by searching the darkest pixels surrounding the predicted shadow locations. This algorithm produced omission errors of around 1% for the cloud class, although the errors were higher for an image that had very low cloud cover and one acquired in a semiarid environment. While higher values were reported for other error measures, most of the errors were found around the edges of detected clouds and shadows, and many were due to difficulties in flagging thin clouds and the shadow cast by them, both by the developed algorithm and by the image analyst in deriving the reference data. We concluded that this algorithm is especially suitable for forest change analysis, because the commission and omission errors of the derived masks are not likely to significantly bias change analysis results.     

基于自适应可见性滤波的近似软影绘制

针对全局光照下的物理正确软影绘制较难满足交互性的难题,提出体现遮挡对象 空间位置远近关系的可变半影近似绘制算法。首先,以光源中心点为参照通过基于光线跟踪的 遮挡测试方法生成二值光源可见性图;并提出每个可视场景点对应自适应可见性空间平滑滤波 器宽度的确定方法;然后执行带掩模计算的自适应可见性滤波来获得从可见区到非可见区平滑 过渡的可见性因子;最后在光线跟踪流程中使用可见性因子动态调制相应可视场景点不考虑遮 挡的直接光照值,再加上间接光照得到高真实感软影。实验结果表明：该算法效果与物理正确 阴影在柔和度方面非常接近,容易绘制镜面反射间接光照,且测试场景的帧率在 30 帧/秒以上, 满足交互性要求。     

Accidental Pinhole and Pinspeck Cameras

We identify and study two types of “accidental” images that can be formed in scenes. The first is an accidental pinhole camera image. The second class of accidental images are “inverse” pinhole camera images, formed by subtracting an image with a small occluder present from a reference image without the occluder. Both types of accidental cameras happen in a variety of different situations. For example, an indoor scene illuminated by natural light, a street with a person walking under the shadow of a building, etc. The images produced by accidental cameras are often mistaken for shadows or interreflections. However, accidental images can reveal information about the scene outside the image, the lighting conditions, or the aperture by which light enters the scene.     

Light Space Cascaded Shadow Maps Algorithm for Real Time Rendering

Owing to its generality and efficiency.Cascaded Shadow Maps(CSMs) has an important role in real-time shadow rendering in large scale and complex virtual environments.However,CSMs suffers from redundant rendering problem—objects are rendered undesirably to different shadow map textures when view direction and light direction are not perpendicular.In this paper,we present a light space cascaded shadow maps algorithm.The algorithm splits a scene into non-intersecting layers in light space,and generates one shadow map for each layer through irregular frustum clipping and scene organization,ensuring that any shadow sample point never appears in multiple shadow maps.A succinct shadow determination method is given to choose the optimal shadow map when rendering scenes.We also combine the algorithm with stable cascaded shadow maps and soft shadow algorithm to avoid shadow flicking and produce soft shadows.The results show that the algorithm effectively improves the efficiency and shadow quality of CSMs by avoiding redundant rendering. and can produce high-quality shadow rendering in large scale dynamic environments with real-time performance.     

单幅图像的保纹理阴影去除

提出一个保纹理的阴影去除模型,对于软阴影有较好的效果。该模型对图像的色彩空间进行变化,转换到一个更有助于描述阴影的色彩空间。针对阴影层的特点,将阴影分为阴影区域和半阴影区域,分别进行处理。特别对于半阴影区域,将问题转化为一个最小化问题来解决。实验结果显示该模型的有效性。