Form Factor Calculation: a New Expression with Implementations on a Parallel T.Node Computer

Abstract

The radiosity technique uses the heat transfer theory to define a view-independent illumination model. For complex scenes, calculation of this model is very time-intensive, due largely to the determination of a geometric factor, defined with a double area integral, and named form factor. This paper presents a new expression of the form factor, which can be reformulated, in a computationally more efficient manner, as a simple line integral for planar polygonal convex surfaces that are perfectly diffuse.Recently, parallel computers have been used to decrease calculation time. Previous work is focused mainly on distributed implementations of a method, the progressive refinement method, widely used for complex environments. The T.Node is a completely reconfigurable MIMD machine, based on the transputer chip. In this paper, we compare a parallel implementation of the progressive refinement method with a direct method which takes into account the memory capabilities of this kind of machine.