Summary

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Summary

This chapter has tried to show that photon mapping is superior to ray tracing and radiosity. It's a much simpler algorithm that achieves the same results. Photon mapping combines all the lighting effects into one solution for a pixel on the image plane during the rendering process. Combining all of these lighting effects into one solution achieves global illumination. Summing the direct illumination, indirect illumination, specular reflections, and caustic illumination in one solution creates a very advanced rendering algorithm. Photon mapping is faster than radiosity because it doesn't require a large amount of memory when rendering complex models. It would be wise to make photon mapping real-time and apply it to games .

This chapter briefly covered some of the undiscovered territory when implementing photon mapping in games. Photon mapping is still relatively new; not many gamers and folks in the graphics community use it. It is up to you to take this information and do great things with it. I hope to see more 3D rendering applications and video games in the near future that are created with photon mapping.

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