Memory Efficient Light Baking

Denk C, Süßmuth J, Schäfer H, Stamminger M (2012)


Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2012

Journal

Publisher: Elsevier

Book Volume: 36

Pages Range: 193-200

Journal Issue: 3

DOI: 10.1016/j.cag.2011.12.001

Abstract

In real-time rendering, global lighting information that is too expensive to be computed on the fly is typically pre-computed and baked as vertex attributes or into textures. Prominent examples are view independent effects, such as ambient occlusion, shadows, indirect lighting, or radiance transfer coefficients. Vertex baking usually requires less memory, but exhibits artifacts on large triangles. These artifacts are avoided by baking lighting information into textures, but at the expense of significant memory consumption and additional work to obtain a parameterization. In this paper, we propose a memory efficient and performant hybrid approach that combines texture- and vertex-based baking. Cheap vertex baking is applied by default and textures are used only where vertex baking is insufficient to represent the signal. Seams at transitions between both representations are hidden using a simple shader which smoothly blends between vertex- and texture-based shading. With our fully automatic approach, we can significantly reduce memory requirements without negative impact on rendering quality or performance. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

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How to cite

APA:

Denk, C., Süßmuth, J., Schäfer, H., & Stamminger, M. (2012). Memory Efficient Light Baking. Computers & Graphics, 36(3), 193-200. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.12.001

MLA:

Denk, Cornelia, et al. "Memory Efficient Light Baking." Computers & Graphics 36.3 (2012): 193-200.

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