The Irradiance Volume
Gene Greger
Master's thesis, Cornell University, 1996
ABSTRACT
This thesis presents a volumetric representation for the global illumination within a space based on the radiometric quantity irradiance.
We call this representation the irradiance volume. Although irradiance is traditionally computed only for surfaces, its definition can be
naturally extended to all points and directions in space. The irradiance volume supports the reconstruction of believable
approximations to the illumination in situations that overwhelm traditional global illumination algorithms. A theoretical basis for the
irradiance volume is discussed and the methods and issues involved with building the volume are described. The irradiance volume
method is tested within several situations in which the use of traditional global illumination methods is impractical, and is shown to
provide good performance.