3 ms·
Wouldn't ambient occlusion have been a better technique?
by bhickey 16y ago
Wouldn't ambient occlusion have been a better technique?
- CountHackulus 16y agoYeah, I'm not sure that Phong Shading is really the takeaway here. It seems that it's more like they went from a local "illumination" technique to a full global "illumination" technique to take into account secondary bounces.
- lutorm 16y agoThis was my impression, too.
- megrimlock 16y agoAmbient occlusion (as the term is typically used) is a way to approximate local reflection of uniform inbound (aka ambient) light. It does this by measuring how much of the exterior environment is visible at each point, as a way to modulate an ambient lighting term. It doesn't really simulate how light bounces locally around an object, nor light emitted by an object. Rather than a light transport simulation it's more of a clever CG approximation hack that looks great and is pretty cheap. But to the real point I think you were trying to make: yes, there have been a lot of strides in simulating light since the 70's, and more advanced techniques exist that should give more accurate results.