Abstract
The objective of the class is twofold. The first and main objective is to expose the irradiance caching algorithm along with all the details and tricks upon which the success of its practical implementation is dependent.
Various image artifacts that the basic algorithm can produce will be shown along with a recipe to suppress them. We will also put strong emphasis on practical aspects of irradiance caching integration in production environments and discuss the particularities used in two big production houses, namely PDI/DreamWorks and Pixar.
The second objective is to acquaint the audience with the recent research results that increase the speed and extend the functionality of basic irradiance caching. Those include: exploiting temporal coherence to suppress temporal flickering; extending the caching mechanism to rendering glossy surfaces; accelerating the algorithm by porting it to the GPU.
Advantages and disadvantages of those methods will be discussed.