GLOW

A Stochastic Path Tracer in Java for Global Illumination

by
Hector Yee
Click on Image to see original VRML 97 Model

Introduction

Glow is a Stochastic Path Tracer written in Java that uses Monte Carlo techniques to solve the Rendering Equation for Global Illumination. In other words, it's a fancy computer program that makes nice pictures that, in limit, will look like stuff in the real world.

I started writing Glow as an experiment to learn about Global Illumination, and I'm also using it as my main renderer for the Advanced Computer Graphics couse in Cornell.

Glow uses the Java 3D VRML Loader and the Vector Math Library, but does the rendering directly in software using Monte Carlo path tracing techniques.

Download

You can download glow by clicking this link. Glow requires:

Usage

java -jar glow.jar model.wrl x y fov depth samples method output.rgbe

model.wrl - any VRML 97 model file
x,y - screen resolution
fov - field of view in radians
depth - depth to trace into
samples - number of samples per pixel
method - 0 = classic monte carlo 1 = adaptive
output - name of file to save into (rgbe format)

e.g. the above logo was rendered with the following command line: java -jar glow.jar glow.wrl 256 256 1.2 1 50 1 glow.rgbe

All images (except reference photograph) were rendered on an Intel Xeon 400 Mhz, 256 MB Ram, with Glow. Cornell Box 2000 model and Nrooks code contributed by Bryan Vandrovec.

Cornell Box 2000, 1000 samples per pixel and reference picture.

Mace and Armor, 256x 256, 10 samples / pix, depth = 2, 218 triangles