Advanced Global Illumination

by Philip Dutré, Kavita Bala, Philippe Bekaert

This book provides a fundamental understanding of global illumination algorithms. It discusses a broad class of algorithms for realistic image synthesis and introduces a theoretical basis for the algorithms presented. Topics include: physics of light transport, Monte Carlo methods, general strategies for solving the rendering equation, stochastic path-tracing algorithms such as ray tracing and light tracing, stochastic radiosity including photon density estimation and hierarchical Monte Carlo radiosity, hybrid algorithms, metropolis light transport, irradiance caching, photon mapping and instant radiosity, beyond the rendering equation, image display and human perception. If you want to design and implement a global illumination rendering system or need to use and modify an existing system for your specific purpose, this book will give you the tools and the understanding to do so.

Genres: Computer Science, Nonfiction, Technology

394 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Philip Dutré is a professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Leuven, since October 2001. His research takes place in the computer graphics group. He got his Ph.D. from the same department in 1996, and he was a postdoctoral associate for 3 years (1998-2001) at the Program of Computer Graphics at Cornell University.

Reviews

[Mario · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed every bit of it. It gave me a good grasp of the fundamentals and reinforced the concepts that I learned elsewhere (umpteen number of blogs, papers, tutorials, similar courses).

Particularly, I like the way complex concepts like Monte Carlo, Metropolis, Sampling methods, fundamental Radiometric and Photometric quantities are explained; These helped to get good intuitions.

Pseudocode have also been of much help; I referenced it while writing code. So, I highly recommend this book as a second book in Global Illumination.

[Artem Kharytoniuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone knows better introduction to raytracing please let me know. From time to time I check for new releases but this book stays my favourite one.

It starts with the definitions of radiometric quantities, then presents the rendering equation and the rest of the book is dedicated to raytracing technique for solving this equation.