Fast Rendering of Reflections in Non-uniform Surfaces Using a Multi-Scale Environment Map

Abstract

A technique is described for rendering in real time reflections on surfaces with non-uniform roughness, which is difficult to do with conventional methods. It combines off-line processing with hardware rendering. First, a multiscale environment map is created of the rough surfaces. Next, the pixels that would significantly affect the rendering results in an omnidirectional image are filtered out. Finally, the reflections on the surfaces are rendered in real time using the map to reflect the effects of the roughness. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed method can render surfaces with non-uniform roughness sufficiently accurately in real time.