Here's a paper from last summer on how Pixar is doing the computations for global illumination more efficiently with a "multiresolution radiosity caching method

Here's a paper from last summer on how Pixar is doing the computations for global illumination more efficiently with a "multiresolution radiosity caching method." http://graphics.pixar.com/library/RadiosityCaching/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/RadiosityCaching/paper.pdf I don't know much about graphics but maybe some of you will find it illuminating (no pun intended....)