Theory and numerical integration of subsurface light transport
In image synthesis, reproducing the complex appearance of objects with subsurface light scattering, such as wax, marble and skin, greatly contributes to the realism of an image. Unfortunately, this added realism comes at a high computational cost. Models based on diffusion theory aim to reduce this computational cost by simulating the physical behaviour of subsurface light scattering while imposing smoothness constraints on the incident and outgoing light fields. An important component of these models is how they are employed to hierarchically evaluate the numerical integral of lighting over the surface of an object. This thesis will first review the existing literature on realistic subsurface lighting simulation, before investigating in more depth the application and extension of modern diffusion models in image synthesis. In doing so, we propose and evaluate a new hierarchical numerical integration technique that uses a novel frequency analysis of the incident and outgoing light fields to reliably adapt the sampling rate during integration. We realize our resulting theory in the context of several state-of-the-art diffusion models, providing a marked improvement in their efficiency and accuracy.
Fourier BSSRDF Fourier analysis Signal processing Subsurface scattering BSSRDF Acceleration data structure Global illumination Image synthesis