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1999
Conference Paper
Titel
Adding Realtime Shadow Feedback to Globally Illuminated Virtual Environments
Abstract
In this paper, we introduce a new method for providing realtime shadow feedback in interactive environments with global illumination simulated by a radiosity process. Several approaches for updating global illumination in dynamic environments have been presented in recent years, but none of these can produce true realtime feedback for moderately complex scenes. The realtime shadows presented here are created by manipulating the vertex colors resulting from a previous radiosity calculation. The notion of multipoints is introduced, that allow significant speed-up of the shading process. This method works on the same scene representation as the radiosity simulation does. We show how the multipoint shading method can be integrated into a Virtual Reality system, in combination with a radiosity update process. Thus, our system provides realtime shadows during user interaction and still enables correct soft radiosity shadows to be updated after the interaction has been finished. The visual ap pearance of the realtime shadows is similar to the radiosity shadows, and its visual quality can easily be controlled by the user, which makes the method adjustable and thus applicable to complex environments.