Chapter 5. Other Rendering Techniques
The two most significant rendering techniques that have been developed over the past two decades are ray tracing and radiosity. Ray tracing is a point-sampling technique and radiosity is a finite element rendering technique. Each of these techniques has weaknesses when it comes to rendering natural lighting effects such as reflection, refraction, soft shadows, depth of field, motion blur, color bleeding, caustics , and direct and indirect illumination . A powerful 3D application must be able to correctly render natural lighting effects as seen in nature. This chapter discusses radiosity in general terms and covers ray tracing in detail because it's going to be used in conjunction with photon mapping.