Self-Shadowing of Dynamic Scenes with Environment Maps using the GPU

Abstract

In this paper we present a method for illuminating a dynamic scene with a high dynamic range environment map with real-time or interactive frame rates, taking into account self shadowing. Current techniques require static geometry (pre-computed light transport), are limited to few and small area lights or are limited in the frequency of the shadows. We facilitate importance sampling of the environment map and GPU based shadow calculation in an efficient way. The shadows are calculated per pixel, so no highly tessellated models are necessary in opposition to other techniques. Our method provides a novel and highly efficient way for using shadow maps as data structure for visibility computations done entirely on the GPU. We achieve real-time frame rates for moderate sized models on current graphics hardware. Since we evaluate the light transport of the scene per frame, complex dynamically animated models can be rendered efficiently.