Radiosity on graphics hardware

Abstract

Radiosity is a widely used technique for global illumination. The computation is typically done offline, but the result is a model suitable for real-time display. We present a technique for computing radiosity, including an adaptive subdivision of the model, using graphics hardware. Since our goal is to make the solution run at interactive rates, we exploit the computational power and programmable functionality of recent graphics hardware. Using our system on current hardware, we have been able to compute a full radiosity solution for a small scene in less than one second.