Efficient Self-Shadowing Using Image-Based Lighting on Glossy Surfaces

In this paper we present a novel natural illumination approach for real-time rasterization-based rendering with environment map-based high dynamic range lighting. Our approach allows to use all kinds of glossiness values for surfaces, ranging continuously from completely diffuse up to mirror-like glossiness. This is achieved by combining cosine-based diffuse, glossy and mirror reflection models in one single lighting model. We approximate this model by filter functions, which are applied to the environment map. This results in a fast, image-based lookup for the different glossiness values which gives our technique the high performance that is necessary for real-time rendering. In contrast to existing real-time rasterization-based natural illumination techniques, our method has the capability of handling high gloss surfaces with directional self-occlusion. While previous works exchange the environment map by virtual point light sources in the whole lighting and shadow computation, we keep the full image information of the environment map in the lighting process and only use virtual point light sources for the shadow computation. Our technique was developed for the usage in real-time virtual prototyping systems for garments since here typically a small scene is lit by a large environment which fulfills the requirements for image-based lighting. In this application area high performance rendering techniques for dynamic scenes are essential since a physical simulation is usually running in parallel on the same machine. However, also other applications can benefit from our approach.