Rendering on Gabriel da Silva

A Look at Bump Mapping Techniques - Part I: Tangent Space Theory

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I - Introduction

Hello fellow life forms!

In today’s post, we take a look at the theory needed for understanding the famous tangent-space mapping, which is the basis for most meso-scale rendering techniques. This post is not intended to be an in-depth mathematical treatment of tangent space, manifolds, mappings or anything like that. It is intended to lay the groundwork in a reasonable manner, so that when I mention Tangent Space or something related to it, you can easily visualize what I mean.

Baking Lightmaps - Series Index

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there, fellow humans from our watery spherical space sphere!

This is the singularity for the posts about lightmap baking! As always, this is mostly a compilation of brain dumps, research of mine and paper implementations! Please bear this in mind before diving in. You can read those in any order you want! I tried to organize the posts in an orderly manner, so if you don’t have a background in the topic or just want a more concrete understanding of it all, read them in the sequence below.

A Look at Bump Mapping Techniques - Series Index

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Welcome to another quest of mine. On this journey we are going to take a look at the family of meso-scale techniques known as Bump Mapping. We are going to first lay the groundwork with the theory behind tangent space for triangles, then we’ll investigate Normal Mapping. After this base work is finished, we’ll venture into the land of Parallax Mapping and then finish our series talking about Filtering.

Where the Shadows Lie - Part I: Introduction & Filtering

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, my dear graphics colleagues! First of all, I’m glad to see you are still holding up after this pandemic. Be safe out there, both you and your loved ones!

Finally! Today we start our journey through Mordor. For some time now, I have been excited to write a complete series of posts about something I love in graphics (in the same style Fabian “ryg” Giesen did, here and here). The first problem with this idea was choosing a topic, as there are so many things I love in the rendering literature, so many that it was hard to pick one, but I decided to stick with Shadows, more specifically the Shadow Mapping algorithm and its gang.

Where the Shadows Lie - Series Index

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You have just reached the quest index for the journey of shadows! This is a compilation of posts about Shadow Mapping in which I aim to explain not just what shadow mapping is, but also how to solve practical issues and implement advanced techniques. Please be aware, though, that this is a gathering of brain dumps of what I DID, not the holy tome of shadow rendering! If you find any errors, please let me know! :)

A More In-Depth Introduction to Radiance

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Back in 2017, I wrote a post on the basics of Radiance and Irradiance. Although nothing is wrong with the concepts explained in the text, there are some flaws in how the core fundamentals are presented. This post is a more detailed introduction to the topic, with the intention of better explaining those fundamental quantities. Beware! This is a BRAIN DUMP!

So, What is Radiance?

Normally, Radiance is thought of as energy per ray of light. This makes sense and is coherent with the units of radiance:

Fun With Horizon Maps

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hello folks! How are your molecules doing?

Introduction

Back in the day, in a forgotten time, I was totally immersed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Eä. I would always try to imagine the landscapes and scenes described in his books - you know, Tolkien gave descriptions of everything. Really, everything. From all the written details he gave, something always caught my attention: the duality present between light and dark.

A great implementation of this concept is the Battle for Wesnoth day/night cycle - lawful vs chaotic units. Besides being a great game, it also has some really great storytelling. Also, it is Open Source!

Material Explorer (a.k.a. BRDF Visualizer)

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Hello folks! How are your molecules doing?

Today’s post is a quick one: no long derivations, no giant matrices (well, almost), just a little show and tell. This year I’ve been working as a graphics researcher at UFSJ on a comparative study of BRDFs (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions), a.k.a. the functions that tell us how light bounces off a surface. The goal is simple to state and not so simple to execute: evaluate each model for energy conservation and theoretical coherence, and then weigh physical accuracy against computational cost (ALU vs. bandwidth) to find out which ones are worth it under real-time constraints.

Deriving the Perspective Projection Matrix

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This is an updated repost from my old, deactivated blog or from notes of my past studies. The date follows the original time of writing.

Hi there, how are your molecules doing?

Today we boldly go into one of the most important transformations in 3D Computer Graphics, namely the Perspective Projection. It doesn’t matter how deep your knowledge of 3D graphics is: whether you wrote your own rasterizer from scratch and implemented the transformation or used it wrapped in some library with your beloved graphics API without knowing its foundations, you’ve used this matrix!

Irradiance & Radiance

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This is an updated repost from my old, deactivated blog or from notes of my past studies. The date follows the original time of writing.

Introduction

Rendering is an evolving science: every day new papers are published, new posts show up on our Twitter feed and we learn new techniques, tricks and mathematical proofs. With new technologies come new topics to be studied and applied, but the foundations stand still as the building blocks, constant over time (most of the time, at least!).