1987/08/01 by John R. Wallace, Michael F. Cohen, Donald P. Greenberg · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques #Advanced Vision and Imaging #Image Enhancement Techniques
paper · doi:10.1145/37401.37438
openalex publication_date 1987/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
View-independent and view-dependent image synthesis techniques, represented by radiosity and ray tracing, respectively, are discussed. View-dependent techniques are found to have advantages for calculating the specular component of illumination and view-independent techniques for the diffuse component. Based on these observations a methodology is presented for simulating global illumination within complex environments using a two-pass approach. The first pass is view-independent and is based on the hemi-cube radiosity algorithm, with extensions to include the effects of diffuse transmission, and specular to diffuse reflection and transmission. The second pass is view-dependent and is based on an alternative to distributed ray tracing in which a z-buffer algorithm is used to sample the intensities contributing to the specularly reflected or transmitted intensity.