A Hierarchical Algorithm for Radiosity Daylighting

A new daylight simulation method for radiosity environments is presented. Daylight illumination is transported in a first step where sun and sky are represented as a set of directional sources. Light is transported using parallel projections of these sources. The scene mesh is adaptively subdivided using energy and visibility criteria obtained from a extended scan-line algorithm that computes a layered depth image for each projection. In a second step, diffuse intereflection is computed through a hierarchical Monte Carlo radiosity algorithm. The method is feasible for it extension for environments containing specular surfaces. Relative short time view-independent global illumination results can be obtained with the proposed method, which make it suitable for daylight building design and analysis applications for both indoors and outdoors environments.