Project Proposal: Radiosity

( click here to download the PDF of this proposal)

Title: Pre-computing Radiosity with OpenGL for Realtime Applications

Student: Robert Gustafson

Class: Computer Graphics II; 4003-571

Professor: Bailey

Project Web Site: http://gustafsonprojects.blogspot.com/search/label/radiosity

Summary:
Implement a system for lighting static scenes with radiosity calculations, with a goal of reproducing the classic radiosity image, the Cornell Box. (see suggested project guidelines at http://www.cs.rit.edu/~rjb/RITcourses/20082/Computer Graphics 2/public/CG2ProjectRadiosity.htm )
Radiosity will be implemented as a preprocessing step, and the results will be passed intro a normal OpenGL rendering pipeline. The preprocessing can be done as a series of passes using OpenGL to quickly solve visibility queries.

Project Objectives:
Implement a radiosity application for producing scenes with realistic reflected light and soft shadows.
Demonstrate the use of OpenGL to accelerate visibility calculations for radiosity
Demonstrate the use the above to pre-compute lighting for a static OpenGL 3d environment.

System and Software:

Platform: OSX
Hardware: MacBook with Intel Core 2 duo processor with 4 gigabytes of ram.
Libraries: OpenGL & GLUT for real-time displays and visibility determination.
Language: C++
IDE: Eclipse
Compiler: g++

Project components:

File Parser: Read the supplied input files into program. This provides camera position, window size, and scene patches.

Environment Visualization: Using OpenGL, the environment will be rendered with patches given the shades determined by the radiosity solver.

User Interface:
-Because the radiosity data is not view-dependent, after computing the lighting, the user will be able to change the camera's position in real-time in the scene to inspect the results.
-User input will determine which testing scene to work with, via keyboard
-User input will determine how many iterations to complete, via keyboard.
-User story:
- launches application by double-clicking on executable
- answers prompt for which scene to test (ex: CornellBox_Fine.txt)
- answers prompt for number of interactions to compute (ex: 4)
- waits for radiosity to compute
- user is shown a default view of the completed scene
- user can then manipulate camera to view scene from other angles
- user presses Escape to quit



Visibility Solver: Using OpenGL, create localized hemicube views to determine a patch's form factors, or visibility of other patches.

Iterative Radiosity Solver: Given information about a patch's form factors, distribute reflected diffuse lighting

Tone reproduction: Remap computed lighting to produce varied effects.

Project Responsibilities: All tasks will be completed by Robert Gustafson



Project Timeline:

Mon, week 4:
Complete parser & main opengl rendering component, so provided worlds can be visualized freely or from the perspective of a particular patch.

Mon, week 5:
Have hemicube views from perspective of a patch

Mon, week 6:
Be able to read back what patches at patch can see in its hemicube
Have mid-project review completed

Mon, week 7:
Be able to solve for 1 iteration of light propagation
Have created own other scenes to test

Mon, week 8:
Be able to solve for arbitrary numbers of iterations, have implement tone mapping

Mon, week 9:
Presentation & Report prepared and functional polishing completed

Mon, week 10:
Code cleanup completed

Mon, week 11:
Code submitted & Report updated if needed and submitted


Final Presentation -
1) Overview of Goals (slides)
2) Show Cornell Box scene without lighting information
3) A live demonstration of computing a number of iterations should be possible. If producing the lighting data takes too long for a live demo, one will be staged in which the data has already been produced
4) Slides about how I used OpenGL as the visibility solver