The lightspeed automatic interactive lighting preview system

ABSTRACT

We present an automated approach for high-quality preview of feature-film rendering during lighting design. Similar to previous work, we use a deep-framebuffer shaded on the GPU to achieve interactive performance. Our first contribution is to generate the deep-framebuffer and corresponding shaders automatically through data-flow analysis and compilation of the original scene. Cache compression reduces automatically-generated deep-framebuffers to reasonable size for complex production scenes and shaders. We also propose a new structure, the indirect framebuffer, that decouples shading samples from final pixels and allows a deep-framebuffer to handle antialiasing, motion blur and transparency efficiently. Progressive refinement enables fast feedback at coarser resolution. We demonstrate our approach in real-world production.

References

1. Alias, 1999. Interactive photorealistic rendering.
2. Andersen, P. H. 1996. Partial evaluation applied to ray tracing. In Software Engineering in Scientific Computing, Vieweg, W. Mackens and S. Rump, Eds., 78--85.
3. Apodaca, A. A., and Gritz, L. 2000. Advanced RenderMan: creating CGI for motion pictures. Morgan Kaufmann.
4. Bleiweiss, A., and Preetham, A. 2003. Ashli---Advanced shading language interface. ACM SIGGRAPH Course Notes.
5. Cook, R. L., Carpenter, L., and Catmull, E. 1987. The reyes image rendering architecture. In Computer Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 87), 95--102.
6. Dorsey, J., Arvo, J., and Greenberg, D. 1995. Interactive design of complex time dependent lighting. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications 15, 2 (Mar.), 26--36.
7. Gershbein, R., and Hanrahan, P. M. 2000. A fast relighting engine for interactive cinematic lighting design. In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2000, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 353--358.
8. Guenter, B., Knoblock, T. B., and Ruf, E. 1995. Specializing shaders. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 95, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 343--350.
9. Hanrahan, P. 1983. Ray tracing algebraic surfaces. In Proc. of SIGGRAPH 1983, 83--90.
10. Hašan, M., Pellacini, F., and Bala, K. 2006. Direct-to-indirect transfer for cinematic relighting. ACM Transactions on Graphics 25, 3 (July), 1089--1097.
11. Horwitz, S., Reps, T., and Binkley, D. 1990. Interprocedural slicing using dependence graphs. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12, 1, 26--60.
12. Jensen, H. W., and Buhler, J. 2002. A rapid hierarchical rendering technique for translucent materials. ACM Transactions on Graphics 21, 3 (July), 576--581.
13. Jones, T. R., Perry, R. N., and Callahan, M. 2000. Shadermaps: a method for accelerating procedural shading. Tech. rep., Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory.
14. Knoblock, T. B., and Ruf, E. 1996. Data specialization. In Proc. of SIGPLAN 1996, 215--225.
15. Mark, W. R., Glanville, R. S., Akeley, K., and Kilgard, M. J. 2003. Cg: A system for programming graphics hardware in a C-like language. ACM Transactions on Graphics 22, 3 (July), 896--907.
16. Mogensen, T. 1986. The application of partial evaluation to raytracing. Master's thesis, DIKU, U. of Copenhagen, Denmark.
17. Ng, R., Ramamoorthi, R., and Hanrahan, P. 2003. All-frequency shadows using non-linear wavelet lighting approximation. ACM Transactions on Graphics 22, 3 (July), 376--381.
18. Nvidia, 2005. Sorbetto relighting technology.
19. Peercy, M. S., Olano, M., Airey, J., and Ungar, P. J. 2000. Interactive multi-pass programmable shading. In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2000, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 425--432.
20. Pellacini, F., Vidimče, K., Lefohn, A., Mohr, A., Leone, M., and Warren, J. 2005. Lpics: a hybrid hardware-accelerated relighting engine for computer cinematography. ACM Transactions on Graphics 24, 3 (Aug.), 464--470.
21. Pellacini, F. 2005. User-configurable automatic shader simplification. ACM Transactions on Graphics 24, 3 (Aug.), 445--452.
22. Pixar, 2001. Irma.
23. Ragan-Kelley, J. 2007. The Lightspeed Automatic Interactive Lighting Preview System. Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
24. Reps, T., Horwitz, S., and Sagiv, M. 1995. Precise interprocedural data flow analysis via graph reachability. In Proc. of SPPL 1995, 49--61.
25. Saito, T., and Takahashi, T. 1990. Comprehensible rendering of 3-d shapes. In Computer Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 90), 197--206.
26. Séquin, C. H., and Smyrl, E. K. 1989. Parameterized ray tracing. In Computer Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 89), 307--314.
27. Sloan, P.-P., Kautz, J., and Snyder, J. 2002. Precomputed radiance transfer for real-time rendering in dynamic, low-frequency lighting environments. ACM Transactions on Graphics 21, 3 (July), 527--536.
28. Tabellion, E., and Lamorlette, A. 2004. An approximate global illumination system for computer generated films. ACM Transactions on Graphics 23, 3 (Aug.), 469--476.
29. Wexler, D., Gritz, L., Enderton, E., and Rice, J. 2005. Gpu-accelerated high-quality hidden surface removal. In Graphics Hardware 2005, 7--14.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics

    • Graphics systems and interfaces

      • Graphics processors

    • Image manipulation

      • Texturing

    • Rendering

      • Ray tracing

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • Interaction devices

      • Graphics input devices