High-quality Shading and Lighting for Hardware-accelerated Rendering

With fast 3D graphics becoming more and more available even on low end platforms, the focus in developing new graphics hardware is beginning to shift towards higher quality rendering and additional functionality instead of simply higher performance implementations of the traditional graphics pipeline. On this search for improved quality it is important to identify a powerful set of orthogonal features to be implemented in hardware, which can then be flexibly combined to form new algorithms. This dissertation introduces a set of new algorithms for high quality shading and lighting using computer graphics hardware. It is mostly concerned with algorithms for generating various local shading and lighting effects and for visualizing global illumination solutions. In particular, we discuss algorithms for shadows, bump mapping, alternative material models, mirror reflections and glossy reflections off curved surfaces, as well as more realistic lens systems and a complex model for light sources. In the course of developing these algorithms, we identify building blocks that are important for future generations of graphics hardware. Some of these are established features of graphics hardware used in a new, unexpected way, some are experimental features not yet widely used, and some are completely new features that we propose. When introducing new functionality, we make sure that it is orthogonal to existing stages in the graphics pipeline. Thus, the contribution of this dissertation is twofold: on the one hand, it introduces a set of new algorithms for realistic image synthesis using computer graphics hardware. These methods are capable of providing image qualities similar to those of simple ray-tracers, but provide interactive frame rates on contemporary graphics systems. On the other hand, this thesis identifies and introduces features and building blocks that are important for realistic shading and lighting, and thus contributes to the development of better graphics hardware in the future.