Dynamic Voxel-Based Global Illumination

Abstract

Global illumination computation in real time has been an objective for Computer Graphics since its inception. Unfortunately, its implementation has challenged up to now the most advanced hardware and software solutions. We propose a real-time voxel-based global illumination solution for a single light bounce that handles static and dynamic objects with diffuse materials under a dynamic light source. The combination of ray tracing and voxelization on the GPU offers scalability and performance. Our divide-and-win approach, which ray traces separately static and dynamic objects, reduces the re-computation load with updates of any number of dynamic objects. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, allowing the real-time display of global illumination effects, including colour bleeding and indirect shadows, for complex scenes containing millions of polygons.