| The hierarchical radiosity algorithm solves for the global
transfer of diffuse illumination in a scene. While its potential algorithmic
complexity is superior to both previous radiosity methods and ray tracing,
for scenes containing detailed polygonal models, or highly tesselated curved
surfaces, its time performance and memory consumption are less than ideal.
Also, the density and orientation of the polygons in the input scene unduly
affect the output of the method. The aim of this thesis will be to show
that by using flexible surface hierarchies similar to those in the surface
simplification literature, the use of regular refinement and to a large
extent isotropic volume clusters can be avoided, increasing both the speed
and the quality of the basic algorithm.
I will develop a radiosity system incorporating these ideas, and show that its performance is superior to existing hierarchical radiosity algorithms, in the domain of scenes containing complex models. The underlying goal of my thesis work is to make high-quality radiosity possible with such scenes. |