Parallelization of a Discrete Radiosity Method Using Scene Division

We present in this article a parallelization of a discrete radiosity method, based on scene division and achieved on a cluster of workstations. This method is based on discretization of surfaces into voxels and not into patches like most of the radiosity methods do. Voxels are stocked into visibility lists representing the space partition into discrete lines and allowing mutually visible neighbour voxels to exchange their radiosities. The parallelization distributes the scene among the processors by dividing it into parts. Exchanges of radiosity values are accomplished between neighbourhood voxels belonging to a same list but located on different processors. This parallelization improved time and distributed memory offering thus the capability to deal with large scenes.