Andrew Chi-Sing Leung, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Title: Spherical radial basis functions for image based rendering

Abstract: This paper introduces a computationally more efficient, mathematically simpler, and visually identical substitute to spherical harmonics (SH) in image based rendering. In the approach, the light property of a pixel is represented by a spherical radial basis function (SRBF) network. It represents lighting including soft shadow, caustics, interreflection, HDR environment map, and other global illumination like effects. It naturally supports both local illumination (point and directional sources) as well as lighting under distant environment (integration of lighting contributions over a spherical environment). The paper covers the underlying mathematics (which shows simplicity), describes its implementation (which exhibits its computational efficiency), and demonstrates the visual results (which shows its comparability).