Fast and accurate hierarchical radiosity using global visibility

Recent hierarchical global illumination algorithms permit the generation of images with a high degree of realism. Nonetheless, appropriate refinement of light transfers, high quality meshing, and accurate visibility calculati on can be challenging tasks. This is particularly true for scenes containin g multiple light sources and scenes lit mainly by indirect light. We presen t solutions to these problems by extending a global visibility data structu re, the Visibility Skeleton. This extension allows us to calculate exact po int-to-polygon form-factors at vertices created by subdivision. The structu re also provides visibility information for all light interactions, allowin g intelligent refinement strategies. High-quality meshing is effected based on a perceptually based ranking strategy which results in appropriate inse rtions of discontinuity curves into the meshes representing illumination. W e introduce a hierarchy of triangulations that allows the generation of a h ierarchical radiosity solution using accurate visibility and meshing. Resul ts of our implementation show that our new algorithm produces high quality view-independent lighting solutions for direct illumination, for scenes wit h multiple lights and also scenes Lit mainly by indirect illumination.