Voxel Cone Tracing Global Illumination

by Alex Nankervis
An implementation of global illumination using voxel cone tracing, as described
by Crassin et al. in Interactive Indirect Illumination Using Voxel Cone Tracing,
with the Crytek Sponza model used for content.
This demo served both as a means to familiarize myself with voxel cone tracing a
nd as a testbed for performance experiments with the voxel storage: plain 3D tex
tures, real-time compressed 3D textures, and 3D textures aligned with the diffus
e sample rays were tested. Sparse voxel octrees were not implemented due to time
constraints, but would have been nice to have as a baseline reference. Compared
to SVO in the context of voxel cone tracing (as opposed to ray casting, where S
VO is a clear winner), 3D textures allow for easier filtering, direct lookups wi
thout evaluating the octree structure, and potentially better cache and memory b
andwidth utilization (depending on cone size and scene density). The clear downs
ide is the space requirement: 3D textures can't scale to larger scenes or smalle
r, more detailed voxels. There may be ways to work around this deficiency: spars
e textures (GL_AMD_sparse_texture), compression, or hybrid schemes that mix tree
structures with 3D textures.
Real-time DXT compression is fast enough to convert the 3D voxel textures on the
fly, however API and driver limitations prevent this from being an effective ch
oice due to the inability to write directly to tiled texture memory and CPU fall
backs that get triggered when trying to populate a compressed 3D texture from GP
U memory. The potential memory bandwidth savings did not result in a performance
advantage - it seems that the cone tracing is limited by texture filtering and
ALU on the hardware tested. This approach may still be worth considering, simply
for the compression alone.
Aligning the 3D textures with the diffuse sample cone directions simplifies cone
tracing significantly (removing the need to manually filter the directionally-d
ependent voxels), allowing the diffuse cones to be traced much faster. Unfortuna
tely, this also requires that the cone directions be uniform for all fragments,
which in turn requires more cones to maintain quality, giving a net loss.
Requires OpenGL 4.3. Tested on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 with the 310.54 beta dr
ivers.
Controls:
W,S,A,D,LCTRL,SPACE: move camera
MOUSE: aim camera
LSHIFT,RMOUSE: modify move speed
P: pause
C: toggle cubes
V: toggle shadows
B: toggle DXT compression
F1: show voxels
F2: show profiler
I,K,J,L: adjust light direction
ESC - exit

---- 3rd party software notices ---Uses GLEW:

The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library

Copyright (C) 2002-2008, Milan Ikits <milan ikits[]ieee org>
Copyright (C) 2002-2008, Marcelo E. Magallon <mmagallo[]debian org>
Copyright (C) 2002, Lev Povalahev
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* The name of the author may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Uses the unmodified LZMA SDK:

LZMA SDK

Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Igor Pavlov

LZMA SDK provides the documentation, samples, header files, libraries,

and tools you need to develop applications that use LZMA compression.
LZMA is default and general compression method of 7z format
in 7-Zip compression program (www.7-zip.org). LZMA provides high
compression ratio and very fast decompression.
LZMA is an improved version of famous LZ77 compression algorithm.
It was improved in way of maximum increasing of compression ratio,
keeping high decompression speed and low memory requirements for
decompressing.

Uses ENet:
Copyright (c) 2002-2007 Lee Salzman
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in th
e Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the
Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subj
ect to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all c
opies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLI
ED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYR
IGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WIT
H THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Uses Assimp:
Open Asset Import Library (assimp)
Copyright (c) 2006-2012, assimp team
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use of this software in source and binary forms,
with or without modification, are permitted provided that the
following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the assimp team, nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior
written permission of the assimp team.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
******************************************************************************
AN EXCEPTION applies to all files in the ./test/models-nonbsd folder.
These are 3d models for testing purposes, from various free sources
on the internet. They are - unless otherwise stated - copyright of
their respective creators, which may impose additional requirements
on the use of their work. For any of these models, see
<model-name>.source.txt for more legal information. Contact us if you
are a copyright holder and believe that we credited you inproperly or
if you don't want your files to appear in the repository.
******************************************************************************

Poly2Tri Copyright (c) 2009-2010, Poly2Tri Contributors

http://code.google.com/p/poly2tri/
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of Poly2Tri nor the names of its contributors may be
used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specifi
c
prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.