Real-time Rendering of Heterogeneous Translucent Objects with Arbitrary Shapes

In this paper, we present a real-time algorithm for rendering translucent objects of arbitrary shape. We approximate the light scattering process inside the object with the diffusion equation, which we solve on-the-fly using the GPU. Our algorithm is general enough to handle arbitrary geometry, heterogeneous materials, deformable objects and modifications of lighting, all in real-time. Our algorithm works as follows: in a pre-processing step, we discretize the object into a regular 4-connected structure (QuadGraph). Thanks to its regular connectivity, this structure is easily packed into a texture and stored on the GPU. At runtime, we use the QuadGraph stored on the GPU to solve the diffusion equation, in real-time, taking into account the varying input conditions: the incoming light and the object material and geometry. We handle deformable objects, as long as the deformation does not change the topological structure of the objects.

@Article\{WWHSYG10,
  author       = "Wang, Yajun and Wang, Jiaping and Holzschuch, Nicolas and Subr, Kartic and Yong, Jun-Hai and Guo, Baining",
  title        = "Real-time Rendering of Heterogeneous Translucent Objects with Arbitrary Shapes",
  journal      = "Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics 2010)",
  year         = "2010",
  url          = "http://artis.inrialpes.fr/Publications/2010/WWHSYG10"
}