Combining light animation with obscurances for glossy environments

Obscurances is a powerful technique that approximates indirect global illumination in a much faster way than classic methods as radiosity or path tracing. In this method, the local environment of a point or a patch is sampled to estimate the amount of occlusion that surrounds it. Fine effects as color reflection can be added and visually pleasant rendering of corners and soft shadows are easily computed. Combined with ray tracing techniques, nondiffuse and specular effects can be added to the surfaces, obtaining thus beautiful and realistic rendered images. Since direct and indirect illumination are decoupled, obscurances are very useful to render animation frames for moving light sources, as they have to be computed only for the first frame and then reused. Ambient light intensity can also be decoupled from obscurances and estimated for every frame, resulting in beautiful colorchanging effects. Light animation help in light design and to convey shape and features of the objects in the scene.