Reducing Computation Time
Although in its basic form radiosity is assumed to have a quadratic increase in computation time with added geometry (surfaces and patches), this need not be the case. The radiosity problem can be rephrased as a problem of rendering a texture mapped scene. In this case, the computation time increases only linearly with the number of patches (ignoring complex issues like cache use).
Following the commercial enthusiasm for radiosity-enhanced imagery, but prior to the standardization of rapid radiosity calculation, many architects and graphic artists used a technique referred to loosely as false radiosity. By darkening areas of texture maps corresponding to corners, joints and recesses, and applying them via self-illumination or diffuse mapping, a radiosity-like effect of patch interaction could be created with a standard scanline renderer (cf. ambient occlusion).
Radiosity solutions may be displayed in realtime via Lightmaps on current desktop computers with standard graphics acceleration hardware.
Read more about this topic: Radiosity (computer Graphics)
Famous quotes containing the words reducing, computation and/or time:
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“I suppose that Paderewski can play superbly, if not quite at his best, while his thoughts wander to the other end of the world, or possibly busy themselves with a computation of the receipts as he gazes out across the auditorium. I know a great actor, a master technician, can let his thoughts play truant from the scene ...”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)
“I was given the gifts of the artist, and the trouble that goes with them: So I have that blessing, and there was never a time that I questioned it or doubted it.... For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows.”
—Louise Nevelson (1900–1988)