Chapter 21. Real-Time Glow

Greg James NVIDIA

John O’Rorke Monolith Productions

Glows and halos of light appear everywhere in the world, and they provide powerful visual cues about brightness and atmosphere. In viewing computer graphics, film, and print, the intensity of light reaching the eye is limited, so the only way to distinguish intense sources of light is by their surrounding glow and halos (Nakamae et al. 1990). These glows reproduce the visual effects of intense light and fool the observer into perceiving very bright sources. Even a subtle glow around an object gives the perception that it is brighter than an object with no glow. In everyday life, these glows and halos are caused by light scattering in the atmosphere or within our eyes ...

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