Effective meshing and form factor calculation for accurate progressive radiosity

Abstract

In this paper two effective methods are proposed to address two inaccuracies, deficient meshing and error-prone form factors, respectively, in the context of progressive radiosity. The first one addresses the meshing problem using an automatic adaptive subdivision that takes the radiosity difference, the radiosity residual, and the visibility information as error estimates. The second method employs a hybrid form-factor evaluation recursively combining an approximation to the analytic point-to-disk form factor and an accurate form factor from a differential area to a convex polygon. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed methods by testing with a set of global illumination test scenes to show the experimental results qualitatively and quantitatively.