This is the second phase of
SIMULGEN (ESPRIT Project #25772).
Keywords
Global illumination, glossy reflection, participating media, fast interactive viewing, high quality image generation for animation
Objectives and results
Rendering glossy surfaces and participating media in a global illumination context is a challenging problem. Interior and lighting design as well as animation production all require the rendering of scenes including these phenomena. Current state-of-the-art restricts them to expensive and often unsatisfactory ray-tracing solutions, or limited, diffuse-only radiosity walk-through systems. In Phase I of SIMULGEN we evaluated the risks and potential of a new approach based on the finite-element radiosity framework. In Phase II we will be developing a robust pre-product level solution which will address two main markets:
(i) interactive viewing of general scenes, containing glossy surfaces and participating media
(ii) high-quality image production of general scenes for animation
Current state-of-the-art simply does not permit interactive viewing of such scenes, and thus the potential for the SIMULGEN approach is very strong. Acceleration of high-quality rendering such as path-tracing or other ray-tracing platforms is a strong requirement of the animation industry.
The goal of our project is to allow fast interactive viewing for general scenes, and greatly accelerated high-quality image generation for animation.
Approach
To achieve our goals we will address:
(a) the representation and control of glossy simulation
(b) acceleration of interactive display, including image-based rendering approaches
(c) improving the quality of reconstruction, for participating media as well as for the specific case of animation
iMAGIS-GRAVIR/IMAG-INRIA, iMAGIS is a joint project of CNRS/INRIA/Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble I) and Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (France)