Project : Fast Shading Algorithms
by
Björn Nystedt and Marko Pirttioja
Spring 2001


Abstract

One main concern when one is producing three-dimensional computer graphics is the trade-off between realism and speed. One wants to incorporate more physics principles into three-dimensional graphics algorithms to better simulate complex interactions between objects and the lightning environment. The calculation of how light interacts with surfaces is a technique called shading and the aim of this paper is to implement and compare the efficiency of different shading algorithms. The different algorithms are timed and compared to each other in order to see which is the fastest one. All algorithms use the Phong illumination model for light-material interaction calculations. The important result of the test is that both Fast Phong shading and Reflection shading is faster then Phong shading, when large polygons are used. Both algorithms are variants of the Phong shading algorithm and we could not spot any differences in the picture they produced.
Keywords: Shading, Illumination, Graphics