Heuristic-search-based light positioning according to irradiance intervals

Abstract

We present a strategy to solve the problem of light positioning in a closed environment. We aim at obtaining, for a global illumination radiosity solution, the position and emission power for a given number of lights that provide a desired illumination at a minimum total emission power. Such a desired illumination is expressed using minimum and/or maximum values of irradiance allowed. A pre-process is needed in which irradiance is computed for a pre-established set of light positions by means of a random walk. The reuse of paths makes this pre-process reasonably cheap. Different heuristic-search strategies are explored and compared in our work, which, combined to linear programming, make it possible to efficiently visit the search space and, in most cases, obtain a good solution at a reasonable cost. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.