Decoupled Shading for Real-time Heterogeneous Volume Illumination

Abstract

Existing real-time volume rendering techniques which support global illumination are limited in modeling distinct realistic appearances for classified volume data, which is a desired capability in many fields of study for illustration and education. Directly extending the emission-absorption volume integral with heterogeneous material shading becomes unaffordable for real-time applications because the high-frequency view-dependent global lighting needs to be evaluated per sample along the volume integral. In this paper, we present a decoupled shading algorithm for multi-material volume rendering that separates global incident lighting evaluation from per-sample material shading under multiple light sources. We show how the incident lighting calculation can be optimized through a sparse volume integration method. The quality, performance and usefulness of our new multi-material volume rendering method is demonstrated through several examples.