Parallel Hierarchical Global Illumination

This paper presents an algorithm that solves the Ren­ dering Equation to any desired accuracy, and can be run in parallel on distributed memory or shared memory com­ puter systems with excellent scaling properties. It appears superior in both speed and physical correctness to recent published methods involving bidirectional ray tracing or hybrid treatments of diffuse and specular surfaces. Like "progressive radiosity" methods, it dynamically refines the geometry decomposition where required, but does so without the excessive storage requirements for "ray histories."