Radiosity for Large Vegetation Scenes

Abstract

Calculating radiosity solutions for large scenes containing multiple plants is all but impossible using the radiosity method in its original form. With the introduction of sophisticated hierarchical and clustering algorithms radiosity for vegetation scenes becomes a solvable challenge. The precomputation of the diffuse light distribution in leaf canopies of forests and other plants can be used to calculate realistic images, but also for agricultural planning purposes. This state of the art report gives an overview of the methods that can, and have been, used to calculate global illumination in vegetation scenes, including hierarchical methods, statistical methods based on simplifications, and specialized methods that have been optimized to handle scenes with a dense, non-isotropic distribution of objects such as canopies.