Techniques

As decades of research and thousands of papers show, there is no single GI technique that fits all users. So the very first decision in projects powered by Lightsprint SDK tends to be: "What technique(s) to use?" Lightsprint SDK offers:

Technique	Class	Highlights	Limitations	Details	Integration	Frame time	Precalc time
Baking	realtime after precalculation	the fastest GI	static lighting limited specular reflections two sided faces share GI for both sides lighting (very slightly) depends on tessellation	artist's guide	Baking in your scene loaded from disk Baking in your scene accessed in memory	# baked objects	quality # baked texels # static triangles
Fireball	realtime after precalculation	the fastest GI with dynamic lights	lighting depends on tessellation two sided faces share diffuse part of GI for both sides	artist's guide	Realtime GI in Lightsprint renderer Realtime GI in your OpenGL renderer Realtime GI in any renderer	# static triangles # dynamic objects	quality # static triangles
Architect	realtime	the fastest GI with dynamic lights and without any precalculations	lighting depends on tessellation two sided faces share diffuse part of GI for both sides sky does not illuminate scene			# static triangles # dynamic objects	(no precalc)
SSGI	realtime	the most simple one	partial GI, only short-distance effects	artist's guide	(easy)	screen resolution
Pathtracing	interactive	the most accurate GI	very noisy, noise reduction not implemented yet	artist's guide		screen resolution # dynamic objects

Combinations

Different techniques can be combined, so that e.g. selected objects have illumination realtime calculated, other objects have it baked into lightmaps, cubemaps or vertex buffers, other objects use constant ambient, and screen space GI is added as a postprocess.

Speed

Frame time and Precalc time columns show major factors that increase time spent in rendering frame, or in precalculation. Writing down all factors is nearly impossible, as times depend also on materials and geometry in your scenes.

Testing

You can quickly test these techniques with SceneViewer sample, see Global Illumination panel for settings.