Chapter 17. Ambient Occlusion

Matt Pharr NVIDIA

Simon Green NVIDIA

The real-time computer graphics community has recently started to appreciate the increase in realism that comes from illuminating objects with complex light distributions from environment maps, rather than using a small number of simple light sources. In the real world, light arrives at surfaces from all directions, not from just a handful of directions to a point or directional light sources, and this noticeably affects their appearance. A variety of techniques have recently been developed to capture real-world illumination (such as on movie sets) and to use it to render objects as if they were illuminated by the light from the original environment, making it possible to more seamlessly ...

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