Fast light-map computation with virtual polygon lights

Abstract

We propose a new method for the fast computation of light maps using a many-light global-illumination solution. A complete scene can be light mapped on the order of seconds to minutes, allowing fast and consistent previews for editing or even generation at loading time. In our method, virtual point lights are clustered into a set of virtual polygon lights, which represent a compact description of the illumination in the scene. The actual light-map generation is performed directly on the GPU. Our approach degrades gracefully, avoiding objectionable artifacts even for very short computation times.