Using Realistic Lighting in Modern Graphics Applications Frann Cois Sillion

ii Abstract The use of 3D graphics on workstations and PCs becomes increasingly important for modern graphics applications. Also the use of 3D virtual environments on the Internet, e.g. using the VRML standard, is promising to be a great success. In all of these applications, realistic lighting is an important feature to obtain a realistic, and thus convincing, impression of 3D objects and complete virtual environments. This tutorial concentrates on the practical aspects of using realistic lighting in modern graphics applications. The tutorial in intended for anyone who must deal with realistic lighting in 3D graphics applications, particularly developers, managers, and researchers who wish to gain a closer understanding of the diierent aspects of realistic lighting and how it can be applied in the context of their applications. The range of topics covered by this tutorial is very broad, trying to bridging the gap between current research and the use of these techniques in modern applications. The aim of this tutorial is to give an overview about the techniques that are available, point out current trends and developments, discuss practical and implementation issues, and describe the use of this technique in applications. As a basis for the later presentations, we cover the basic mathematical and physical formulation of realistic lighting computations, and give an overview of the state-of-the-art. We then discuss in more detail the class of hierarchical and multi-resolution techniques, which are the basis for the most eecient algorithms we have available. Other topics covers the problem of creating a consistent and open software architecture for the implementation of realistic lighting computations in applications, and discuss the integration with traditional rendering techniques. Finally, we present and discuss the use of realistic lighting in a number of graphics applications, ranging from architecture to the problems in lighting design when combining real and virtual environments, including a discussion of the issues of lighting computations in complex scenes and adaptive control of the simulation. iii Speaker Biographies Jean-Claude Paul is professor at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and currently the scientiic director of a joint CNRS/INRIA research project in computer graphics and computer vision. He was author of numerous research works and books in the eld of design and architecture, before to work the computer graphics eld. Since 1992, he works in the radiosity domain, with an experience of software development. Jean-Claude Paul has received the prize of the Academie …