GPUGI: Global Illumination Effects on the GPU

Abstract

In this tutorial we explain how global illumination rendering methods can be implemented on Shader Model 3.0 GPUs. These algorithms do not follow the conventional local illumination model of Di- rectX/OpenGL pipelines, but require global geometric or illumination information when shading a point. In addition to the theory and state of the art of these approaches, we go into the details of a few algorithms, including mirror reflections, reflactions, caustics, diffuse/glossy indirect illumination, precomputation aided global illumination for surface and volumetric models, obscurances and tone mapping, also giving their GPU implementation in HLSL or Cg language.