GPU Gems 3

Chapter 17. Robust Multiple Specular Reflections and Refractions

Tamás Umenhoffer Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Gustavo Patow University of Girona

László Szirmay-Kalos Budapest University of Technology and Economics

In this chapter, we present a robust algorithm to compute single and multiple reflections and refractions on the GPU. To allow the fragment shader to access the geometric description of the whole scene when looking for the hit points of secondary rays, we first render the scene into a layered distance map. Each layer is stored as a cube map in the texture memory. The texels of these cube maps contain not only color information, but also the distance from a reference point and the surface normal, so the texels can be ...