A Precalculated Point Set for Caching Shading Information

Abstract

In this short paper, we present a caching scheme for low-frequent shading information. The scheme consists of a precalculated, carefully constructed sparse set of points, the density of which adapts to local shading requirements, which we estimate by calculating the ambient occlusion. This fixed set of points is then used to store shading information. This shading information is calculated once, or updated prior to rendering each frame. Finally, during rendering, the shading information stored in the point set is used to estimate shading for any point in the scene using interpolation. We apply this scheme to render soft shadows and indirect lighting in a real-time ray traced game environment.