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Concept
Light transport theory
Summary
Light transport theory deals with the mathematics behind calculating the energy transfers between media that affect visibility. This article is currently specific to light transport in rendering processes such as global illumination and HDRI.
The amount of light transported is measured by flux density, or luminous flux per unit area on the point of the surface at which it is measured.
Given a surface S, a hemisphere H can be projected on to S to calculate the amount of incoming and outgoing light. If a point P is selected at random on the surface S, the amount of incoming and outgoing light can be calculated by its projection onto the hemisphere.
The hemicube model works in a similar way that the hemisphere model works, with the exception that a hemicube is projected as opposed to a hemisphere. The similarity is only in concept, the actual calculation done by integration has a different form factor.
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering converts a model into an either by simulating a method such as light transport to get physically based photorealistic images, or by applying some kind of style as non-photorealistic rendering. The two basic operations in light transport are transport (how much light gets from one place to another) and scattering (how surfaces interact with light).
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Radiosity (computer graphics)
In 3D computer graphics, radiosity is an application of the finite element method to solving the rendering equation for scenes with surfaces that reflect light diffusely. Unlike rendering methods that use Monte Carlo algorithms (such as path tracing), which handle all types of light paths, typical radiosity only account for paths (represented by the code "LD*E") which leave a light source and are reflected diffusely some number of times (possibly zero) before hitting the eye.
Global illumination
Global illumination (GI), or indirect illumination, is a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes. Such algorithms take into account not only the light that comes directly from a light source (direct illumination), but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene, whether reflective or not (indirect illumination).