CSE 168, Spring 2006
Final Project
Alex Zavodny
Techniques:
Soft shadows:
I implemented soft shadows early on using the basic algorithm presented in the book. This is a picture with 512 samples of the light; it took quite a while to render, but the results are very nice.
Depth-of-Field:
Depth-of-field was fairly straightforward to implement, but increased rendering times drastically. With depth-of-field in place, it was very simple to implement anitaliasing, and so I implemented that as well.
Environment Mapping:
One of my priorities was to implement environment mapping, so that I could provide more interesting lighting to my scenes. I did not do HDR environment mapping; rather, I converted the .hdr to a low dynamic range .ppm and used that instead.
Path Tracing:
I originally intended to use path tracing as a stepping stone to photon mapping, and then use that as my global illumination technique. I couldn't get the look I liked with photon mapping, so I went back to just using path tracing.
No Light Bounces
One light bounce
Four light bounces, but not enough ray sampling
Photon Mapping:
Photon mapping took a while to get working properly, but I was satisfied with the results in the end. These are some pictures that I took during my time experimenting with photon mapping.
Photon Map used for direct lighting
Visualization of the photons
Visualization of indirect lighting for photon mapping
Full Gathering