Non-Linear Beam Tracing on a GPU

Beam tracing combines the flexibility of ray tracing and the speed of polygon rasterization. However, beam tracing so far only handles linear transformations; thus, it is only applicable to linear effects such as planar mirror reflections but not to non‐linear effects such as curved mirror reflectio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computer graphics forum Vol. 30; no. 8; pp. 2156 - 2169
Main Authors: Liu, Baoquan, Wei, Li-Yi, Yang, Xu, Ma, Chongyang, Xu, Ying-Qing, Guo, Baining, Wu, Enhua
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.12.2011
Subjects:
Analysis
Beams (radiation)
Commodities
Computer graphics
GPU techniques
I.3.3 [Picture/Image Generation]: Display algorithms
I.3.7 [Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism]: Shading
I.3.7 [Three‐Dimensional Graphics and Realism]: Shading, Ray tracing
Image processing systems
nonlinear beam tracing
nonlinear beam tracing, real‐time rendering, GPU techniques, reflection, refraction
Nonlinearity
Polygons
Ray tracing
Real time
real-time rendering
Reflection
refraction
Studies
ISSN:0167-7055, 1467-8659
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Beam tracing combines the flexibility of ray tracing and the speed of polygon rasterization. However, beam tracing so far only handles linear transformations; thus, it is only applicable to linear effects such as planar mirror reflections but not to non‐linear effects such as curved mirror reflection, refraction, caustics and shadows. In this paper, we introduce non‐linear beam tracing to render these non‐linear effects. Non‐linear beam tracing is highly challenging because commodity graphics hardware supports only linear vertex transformation and triangle rasterization. We overcome this difficulty by designing a non‐linear graphics pipeline and implementing it on top of a commodity GPU. This allows beams to be non‐linear where rays within the same beam do not have to be parallel or intersect at a single point. Using these non‐linear beams, real‐time GPU applications can render secondary rays via polygon streaming similar to how they render primary rays. A major strength of this methodology is that it naturally supports fully dynamic scenes without the need to pre‐store a scene database. Utilizing our approach, non‐linear ray tracing effects can be rendered in real‐time on a commodity GPU under a unified framework.
Bibliography:ArticleID:CGF1905
ark:/67375/WNG-RNJ0MNNS-B
istex:B5D6767C0BB8CC1180D70CA2051AED1FCF181835
The fundamental aspects of this work were conducted while Baoquan Liu was visiting Microsoft Research Asia.
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ISSN:0167-7055
1467-8659
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2011.01905.x