Generation of Radiosity Texture Atlas for Realistic Real-Time Rendering

Abstract

Radiosity methods are a both physically correct and efficient way to compute the global illumination giving the visual atmosphere to a 3D scene. In this paper, we present a new approach to optimizing the visualization of meshed models illuminated using these methods. Our approach is based on a texture atlas, which makes it possible to store the global illumination in a set of textures, that can be mapped in real-time onto the model by the graphics hardware. Our contribution is a new robust atlas generation method well adapted to the visualization of illuminated complex meshed models, and based on a tight cooperation between the segmentation and the parameterization algorithms. In our segmentation method, the combinatorial information of the mesh is systematically preferred over the geometry whenever possible, which makes the algorithm both simpler and more robust. Large industrial models with complex topologies and poor mesh qualities can be efficiently processed. The paper concludes with some results, showing our method applied to architectural and car design industry models, and demonstrating that it both speeds up the visualization and is easy to integrate into existing advanced rendering software.